


Will We Last the Night

by CSHfic, VSfic



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Book 2: Earth (Avatar), Developing Relationship, Earth Kingdom (Avatar), Enemies to Lovers, Episode: s01e19-20 The Siege of the North, Getting Together, Hurt Sokka (Avatar), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Sickfic, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 55,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSHfic/pseuds/CSHfic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSfic/pseuds/VSfic
Summary: Chief Arnook never assigns Sokka to protect Princess Yue, so he goes to fight the Fire Nation with the other men. When the moon dies, and the ocean spirit takes its revenge, Sokka is caught standing on the deck of a Fire Nation ship. Sokka should have drowned… and hewouldhave drowned, if not for a certain Fire Nation raft fleeing the North Pole.[An enemies-to-lovers season 2 rewrite, where Sokka is separated from the gaang during the Siege of the North, and travels the Earth Kingdom with Zuko instead].
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 978
Kudos: 1781
Collections: Fics that I want to read once they are complete





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We've been wanting to write a canon divergent re-write for a bit, so we're really excited for this one!

Sokka glared at the metal door leading to the command post. Every so often he cut a glance down over the rail to the lower deck. He could hear the Fire Nation soldiers calling to each other below. The air smelled like fire down here, and it made his stomach roll. So far, the Fire Nation sailors manning the trebuchets had only fired a few warning shots toward the wall, but as the night stretched on and the ocean darkened, the smell of smoke and ash grew steadily stronger.

He didn’t know what they were waiting for, only that they were clearly growing impatient.

Sokka could sympathize. He turned back to glare at the command post door again, still stubbornly closed.

Still no Hahn.

Sokka grit his teeth. He’d known this would be a mess from the start, because their intelligence was already spotty, and Hahn was a _jerk_. For a moment, Sokka considered the main deck, where half a dozen men were gathered around the trebuchet aimed for Agna Qel’a’s walls.

Maybe he could…

...but no, there were too many soldiers, and anyway, he couldn’t risk Hahn finally coming back while he was going off mission, even if it meant sabotaging their weapons.

Sokka sighed, a frustrated hiss through clenched teeth. He was _useless_ just sitting here, waiting for Hahn to show up, nervous energy burrowing deeper with every minute that passed without him.

He supposed he should be grateful, no matter how much Hahn got under his skin. After they’d been caught fighting, he’d been certain that Chief Arnook was going to take him off the mission altogether. That would have been so much worse, sitting safe behind the walls while the real warriors were out fighting to protect their people.

The plan… wasn’t great, because their intelligence was terribly dated, and Hahn kept calling Admiral Zhao _“Choi,”_ no matter how many times Sokka corrected him. At least Sokka had convinced them that going during the day was too risky, with how noticeably off their stolen uniforms were from the real thing. They’d been ferried to the admiral’s ship by a small craft, easy enough to slip through the Fire Nation’s defenses under the cover of darkness, with a skilled waterbender to steer them over the waves. To get off the ships again, they were on their own.

The only problem was that Zhao wasn’t _here_.

Sokka and Hahn had split up to cover more ground, hoping that their intelligence about the ship’s layout wasn’t as out of date as their uniforms. They’d agreed to meet up again once they’d searched their half of the ship, regroup, and then, if they found him, take down Zhao together. Hahn had gone for the command deck, and Sokka had agreed to search down below.

It had been stuffy, and cramped, and the hallways mostly deserted, with the majority of the sailors already at their battle stations. The distraction of the battle had given him enough time to swap his armor for a set from their stores. It fit a little strangely over his coat, but the fabric was way too thin to go without—he guessed keeping warm was easier for firebenders, but he needed his furs.

Then he’d combed the rooms below, quickly, posing as a messenger looking to relay an urgent report to Admiral Zhao.

They’d all told him the same thing: Zhao wasn’t on the ship.

Sokka had no idea where he could have gone, because what kind of admiral abandoned his own fleet at the start of a battle? But none of the sailors had suspected him, so they must have been telling the truth, even as they quickly shuffled him out again before he could overhear any of their strategizing.

Sokka squinted at the sky. It had been almost an hour since he’d split up with Hahn. He’d had a lot more ground to cover on the lower decks—even if Hahn was moving slowly, even if his shitty disguise meant he couldn’t afford to get too close to the Fire Nation sailors patrolling the command deck, it didn’t make sense for him to be this late.

Sokka took his helmet off and rested it against his knee, then mopped his brow with the tail of his sleeve. They’d agreed to meet by the lifeboats. Crouched where he was in view of the command deck door, he could feel the heat pouring off the engine room, spitting steam from the ventilation pipes bracketing the cabins. Every so often a gust of wind would catch the hot air and wash the deck in a damp fog. His skin prickled with it, overwarm between the unnatural heat and the layers beneath his stolen armor. It was hotter here than it was even down below, and the heat was only making him more sick with nerves, a prickling anxiety that something had gone _wrong_ clawing the back of his mind.

Hahn should have beaten Sokka here. Sokka crossed his arms, chewed his lip nervously. Had he run into trouble? Had he found Zhao after all? Maybe he’d gone and gotten himself dumped overboard, or maybe he’d just… left already, ditched Sokka without bothering to wait and see if he made it out all right.

Sokka dared to lean out over the rail, glancing quickly at the next ship over. He could just make out the enemy sailors moving through the firelight, but if any of the other warriors had been discovered, they weren’t raising any alarms. It was too dark to tell without the backlight of the city lights, but he thought he might have seen the shadow of a Fire Nation liferaft slipping over the water to disappear behind the ship’s hull, as the first of the other men finished their search. If no alarms had been raised yet, that probably meant that they hadn’t found Zhao either—

Behind him, the door banged open, screeching on its tracks. Sokka whirled, relief and frustration mixed up on his face.

But then he froze, breath caught as metal boots rang hollow against the deck. The sailor paused, too, helmet slung under one arm, fingers curled around the bowl of his pipe. He pinched a flame between his thumb and forefinger as he turned.

And then he stopped, fingers faintly smoking as he stared.

Sokka dove for his helmet again, panic crushing rationality. It was too late, the man had seen him. He should have tried to bluff—

The pipe clattered against the deck, spilling ash. Sokka could see the warning shout forming on the man’s lips, so he quickly pivoted and flung his helmet in his face. It crunched against his nose, and his shout turned more into a pained grunt. Before the helmet even hit the ground, Sokka forced his way past him, down the deck toward the lifeboats.

Damn it, _damn it, Hahn_. It was too late now, he _had_ to leave without him—

“Raid!” the man shouted over the rail, which was—which was very overgenerous, because it was just Sokka and his tiny little life raft and _no fucking Hahn_ —

Heads swiveled in unison as the sailors on the deck below turned. He was completely exposed on the upper deck, with dozens of firebenders all in range, and then—

The sky tinged blood red.

Sokka flinched back, expecting fire.

It didn’t come. He whirled around, confused. When he locked eyes with the firebender he looked—just as confused as Sokka, almost afraid. He stared back at Sokka for a moment longer, chest heaving strangely, before giving into temptation. He looked up.

Sokka’s skin prickled as he turned his face up toward the moon, a fiery red disk against the bloody pinprick stars dotting the night.

Anxiety coiled sour in his stomach as he stared at it. His mind was screaming at him, _wrong, wrong, wrong_ , even as his limbs refused to move. A hatch clanged open below, and a disquieted murmur drifted up to where he leaned against the rail.

The sound—the reminder that he was still surrounded—snapped him out of it. Sokka backed away, but the sailor was still frozen in place. He needed to get out now, back to Agna Qel’a, find his sister and Aang, because something was _very wrong here_.

The liferaft was stored with a mechanical winch. It groaned ominously when he yanked on the lever. The sound drew the sailor’s attention, face twisted with misplaced anxiety.

“Stop!” he shouted.

Sokka ducked a streak of flame as it sailed over his head, throwing his weight against the lever, jammed or frozen he couldn’t tell. He could feel the next strike before he even registered the flash, air warping with heat. Sokka swore and pulled back just in time to avoid getting burned, then tugged his sleeve down over his hands to grip the red-hot winch again—

Everything went dark. Sokka froze, arm still outstretched, blinking against the sudden blackness. A cry of alarm rose from the deck below, followed by a flare of light. He flinched, and the light ebbed away again, pale flames clawing desperately at the heavy dark before guttering out. Sokka turned toward the pitch black sky and stared in horror.

The moon—?

Another fire followed, burning stronger, casting long shadows over the deck below. Another cry rose up, but Sokka couldn’t tear his eyes away, heart pounding in his ears at the empty place in the sky where the full moon had been only moments ago.

How was… _where the fuck was the moon?_

His first, hysterical thought was that this… had to be some weird Avatar thing, more spirit nonsense, he was so _sick_ of spirit nonsense—

The shadows on the deck below shifted, elongating, tinting from red to blue.

A glowing mass was rising from the water, towering over the palace, the wall, the ships and the polar waters of the ocean stretching on behind them. As he stared, the water began to take form, eyes, arms, a head. It was—a fish, for a moment, bulbous eyes unblinking, shimmering with a strange light, it—

It was the ocean spirit.

Sokka’s heart seized as it blinked, surging from terrifying stillness to motion. The spirit swept forward, supernaturally fast for how large it was. It slashed at the first ship on the line with one clawed hand. The cabin shrieked as the top half of the ship slid off to crash down on the deck below. The ship lurched under the sudden shift in weight, cast-off waves rocking the other ships in the aftershock. Sokka held on. The soldiers on the deck below were screaming. The trebuchet shuddered as the ammo caught fire, and lights swelled on the decks of several other ships at almost the same moment. The fires streaked across the sky to be swallowed by fish-spirit’s body, winking like fireflies in the darkness.

The sailor was still standing beside him. Sokka had almost forgotten him. He met his eye, and the man stared back, hands lax at his sides. His face was—unnaturally still, eyes too wide, almost like… almost like he knew—

The spirit turned its unblinking gaze down on them as it slowly swept its arms out.

It looked… just like that stupid waterbending scroll, like Katara when she was practicing, the same form sweeping a wall of water from the sea, towering higher and higher until Agna Qel’a disappeared, and all he could see for miles and miles was a wall of impenetrable black, swirling under that terrifying blue glow.

The life raft—

Wasn’t going to do shit against a wave that size.

Katara—

Oh.

Katara was going to be so sad.

He saw the wave coming, but he didn’t see it hit, between one blink and the next. Sokka’s back slammed against the cabin wall. He pressed both hands to his mouth and somehow managed to keep his lungs from seizing in the cold, his muscles screaming with the impact. The pressure was enormous, pinning him down, spots dancing across his eyelids.

And then they were sinking, water roaring in his ears, currents dragging him under. The water was pitch black around him. The salt burned his eyes as he whirled, or tried to, fighting the current, fighting the drag of the wreckage sinking around him. Sokka kicked against it, but he couldn’t—the armor was too heavy. He scrabbled at the clasps with numb fingers, but it was dark, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t remember how—

A hand fell on his shoulder, searingly hot in the frigid waters. Sokka flinched, gasped and lost a mouthful of air. The hand jerked back, and he felt the chest plate loosen, fall away. He turned in the pitch black water, reached out, but the hand was gone. Sokka tried to grab for the armor, to tell which way it was sinking, figure out which way was up, but it slipped away into the darkness, too, and he was alone.

Sokka’s lungs were screaming. He’d already lost too much air. He pressed one hand against his mouth, picked a direction and tried to kick off again. Something caught his sleeve, the torn edge of a shattered hull, maybe, he couldn’t see. Whatever it was only dragged him further down.

He couldn’t see. Everywhere he looked was inky black, impossible to tell whether he was clawing toward or away from danger. There was no light down here, not from the moon, not from the ocean spirit, just shadows in the churning water, and—

For one moment the current swelled around him. All at once the pressure lifted. The darkness broke, and Sokka blinked against the sting of salt in his eyes. A soft white light bloomed in the water, hovering just ahead of him, taking shape.

Yue smiled at him, soft and a little sad.

He was—hallucinating. He was going to drown, and he’d never even...

Yue leaned in. Her fingers brushed feather light over his cheeks, warm wherever she touched. She kissed him, and the burning pressure in his lungs seemed to ease.

Yeah. Hallucinating.

Sokka blinked again. Yue was gone, but the water was no longer dark—he could just see the faint outline of the moon breaking through the surface. The shadow of something drifted past on the current, washing out to sea, and that passing darkness startled him into motion, swimming up, up, toward the scattering debris.

All that was left of the Fire Nation fleet.

  
  


Sokka had fallen through the ice once when he was five years old. He and Katara had found the hole while they were playing. It was rough-edged, clearly abandoned, but Sokka couldn’t help imagining the tiger seals poking up through it for air, and he’d thought—he was brave warrior, a skilled hunter like his dad, so it had seemed like such a good idea for him to slip out later that night when he couldn’t sleep, wrestling with a spear that was slightly too long for him to carry easily.

He was much too young to have been out alone, but stubborn enough to want to try. It hadn’t occurred to him that there might be a reason that the breathing hole was abandoned, that the unseasonably warm weather had weakened the ice around it. The shock of falling had lost him most of his breath, the shock of the cold water had done the rest.

He didn’t remember how it felt to drown—only the fall, and the fear, and then his dad scruffing him by the back of his coat and dragging him out, sopping and miserable, ice clinging to his eyelashes and wet fur too heavy to lift with tingling arms.

He remembered how his dad had wrapped him up inside his own coat and carried him home. He hadn’t even been angry—

Sokka’s eyes stung with the memory, or the cold, or the salt. It was ridiculous. He hadn’t thought of that day in years, and he didn’t know why he would now, except to feel sorry for himself—

He’d freeze to death in minutes if he didn’t get out of the water. Sokka gripped the flat edge of a shattered deck and tried to pull himself up. It took him three tries to get a grip on it, fingers already clumsy, chest painfully tight. He’d swallowed water, each breath rattling, but somehow he managed to get himself up enough to roll over onto the edge. The wreckage was hardly buoyant enough to float. It rocked dangerously under his weight as he settled. Sokka curled in on himself, gasping for breath, and so… so tired...

Sokka woke to voices, and something much more solid under him. The precarious listing of the ruined deck was gone, replaced with gentle rocking. He felt sick—he’d never gotten seasick before—and suddenly he was heaving seawater and bile onto the deck.

“Dad,” he tried to say. That didn’t feel quite right, but he couldn’t remember why. The word stuck in his throat anyway, came out as a painful rasping cough, instead. The voices quieted, for just a moment.

He was shivering violently, and that—that was good, Sokka knew it was good, because cold and shivering was bad news but cold and not shivering was a death sentence. He was soaked, and that was... less good, that was frostbite and not shivering and falling asleep and not waking up again...

...what was happening? He groaned and tried to sit up, but his limbs felt numb and distant, like they belonged to someone else.

“He’s alive,” a voice said, tense, just barely edged with relief.

A hand wrapped around his shoulder and rolled him onto his stomach. Sokka grunted in pain as something jabbed him in the back, a heavy weight pressing him down into the wood. Hands wrapped around his wrists and jerked his arms back. The touch burned against his frozen skin. He struggled, a little. Tried to, with his hands bunched behind his back.

“Prince Zuko,” another voice said, low and admonishing. That set off alarm bells—it took an embarrassingly long time to remember why. Sokka cracked an eye, tilted his head to squint at the shadow leaning over him. Why was he, of all people… what was he _doing_ here?

“He’s still our enemy, Uncle,” the voice said. _Zuko_ said, because he was leaning over him, forcing him down with a knee in his back, tying his hands. His hair brushed the back of Sokka’s neck as he leaned in, but he was so cold he could barely feel the whisper of it against his skin.

“Don’t… don’t touch me,” Sokka said. His throat rasped painfully when he spoke, chest tight. He coughed again, all salt and seawater. Zuko grimaced.

The weight on his back lifted off, and Sokka gasped. Zuko nudged him with his boot, rolled him over onto his back. Sokka tried to curl in on himself, but he was... so tired, his muscles weren’t cooperating. His fists dug into the small of his back.

Zuko stepped around him toward his head, considering. Sokka clenched his teeth and glared. The effect wasn’t very intimidating with his vision swimming, lying there shivering like a drowned elephant rat.

Zuko just watched him, face strangely blank. Sokka’s heart beat feathery in his chest. He was pretty sure he’d never seen Zuko anything but angry. Anxiety prickled down his spine at his placid calm. Slowly, Zuko kneeled.

“Wait, don’t,” Sokka gasped. He tried to pull away, but there was nowhere else for him to go, nowhere but back in the water.

Zuko drew a deep breath through his nose, once, twice, a flash of light between his teeth with each exhale. On the third breath his arms jerked forward. Sokka flinched, expecting a blow, flames, but—

“ _Oh_ ,” Sokka sighed, as warmth washed over him in a shimmering wave, splitting the frigid air to a steaming cloud that whipped away on the wind. Zuko did it again, then shifted closer, so that he was kneeling right behind Sokka’s head, knees brushing the ice-crusted tips of his wolf tail. He laid both hands on Sokka’s shoulders, firm pressure, and the water hissed from his coat in a cloud of steam. It hurt, a little, the sudden heat, and then… then it was just warm, and such a relief that his breath caught in his lungs.

Sokka exhaled shakily, shuddering violently as the warmth washed over him.

“Thank you,” Sokka mumbled. Trying to speak drew another wet cough from him, shoulders tensing with the effort. Zuko just pressed him down again, hardly putting any strength behind it. Sokka was... so tired. He blinked slowly, eyelids fluttering, weakly fighting the exhaustion seeping through his skin and into his bones.

Zuko snorted and turned away. He kept his hands steady, fingers twitching only slightly on Sokka’s shoulder.

“You’re no good to me dead,” he said.

Sokka woke to the gentle rocking of the sea. It was quiet. He was cold, but not nearly as cold as he’d been last night. His clothes had dried completely, hood tucked up over his head, partly obscuring his face. He remembered the warmth, then, the feeling sinking through his skin to his bones, the intensity in Zuko’s expression as he leaned over him in the darkness. He shivered involuntarily at the memory. Zuko had kept him alive. He’d—

Wait. Zuko had kept him alive.

Sokka’s heart began to race, thoughts whirring. _Why_ had Zuko kept him alive? What did he want with Sokka?

Sokka’s fingers were cold. He’d lost his gloves sometime between the Fire Nation ship and the swim and…

Oh, this was bad. He flexed his wrists, fingertips brushing the rough edges of the rope binding his arms behind his back. His shoulders ached from spending so long in the same position. Sokka bit back a pained sound as he tried to shift over to relieve some of the tension in his arms. His back had ached before, but now that he was warmer it lanced through his shoulders where he’d stuck the cabin when the wave hit. Sokka shifted again, slower. He was… he was probably okay. His arms ached, and he was cold, and his back was definitely going to bruise spectacularly, but he could handle that. He tried to roll his shoulder, then tensed. The holster on his upper back was gone, the familiar tug of the strap over his shoulder missing. Where was his…?

Oh.

He… must have dropped his boomerang in the ocean, maybe when he was ditching the armor. Exhausted, near drowned, arms pulled behind his back, it was that thought that finally made it real, fear setting like hooks beneath his ribs. Sokka’s heart thumped in his throat, too loud next to the sedate churning of the sea.

“You’re awake,” Zuko said.

Sokka squinted one eye open. The sun had risen while he was unconscious, climbing now toward its zenith, partly obscured by a gray-cast sky. His vision was strangely blurry for a moment, and he blinked rapidly to clear it.

His heart sank, taking in the vast and empty sea, the raft, and the Fire Nation red of the sails. The raft was small, and looked like it had been cobbled together from the wreckage—the deck from a Water Tribe fishing boat, the pontoons ripped from a Fire Nation ship, tattered sails and mismatched rope, all made for a quick escape. There wasn’t much else, aside from a couple small bags lashed to the mast, hardly enough supplies for a solo voyage, let alone two people, or three.

Sokka tilted his head to glare at the raft’s other passengers. Zuko and his uncle were sitting next to each other, both… staring at him, Zuko with a scowl, Iroh with a small frown, the barest tilt of concern in his expression.

Which of the Fire Nation ships had been Zuko’s? The ship he’d been following them on had been smaller, hadn’t it? But all of the ships on the line were the same class of warship, so clearly Zuko must have gotten an upgrade, for all the good that did him against the ocean spirit.

For a moment Sokka just glared at the sky, because _of course_ Zuko, with his stupid jerk luck, had managed to escape the wave and somehow find himself a raft…

He shouldn’t be complaining. He’d probably be dead without that stupid jerk luck, not that he was feeling particularly grateful about it. Zuko was the crown prince of the Fire Nation, and his uncle was a decorated general, the Dragon of the West. They’d probably ordered the attack in the first place, maybe even planned it. This was all his fault.

He wondered if he’d had time to try to capture Aang, between the ocean spirit, and his fleet being destroyed, and escaping. Probably, knowing Zuko.

He hoped Aang had kicked his butt.

Sokka was feeling a lot of things right now, but all the confusion of the attack and the fear of the drowning and the panic of waking up _here_ of all places basically distilled down to one clear sentiment.

“Fuck _off_ ,” Sokka said.

He turned his face down toward the lining of his hood and huffed a harsh breath. Then he pressed his shoulder into the deck and levered himself up to sitting. His head swam at the sudden shift in position, vision narrowing for a moment before it cleared.

Zuko snorted. “I saved your life.”

“You’re the reason my life needed saving!” he said. “You and your stupid—ships!”

His arms ached, tied behind his back just-shy of too tightly. Sokka tugged experimentally, testing the knot. The rope bit into his wrists, damp and chafing uncomfortably. It was… good quality rope. Inexplicably, that pissed him off.

“Untie me!” Sokka said.

Zuko looked like he’d had as rough of a night as Sokka had. His face was badly mottled with cuts and scrapes, unscarred eye slightly swollen under a darkening bruise. Sokka knew it was probably from the ocean spirit, but… he very pettily hoped that was Katara’s doing, instead. Zuko’s cheeks were already pink from the cold, but he flushed more when he caught Sokka staring at the mess of his face. He glowered.

“Tell me where the Avatar is headed next,” Zuko said, ignoring his demand.

Sokka scoffed, a quip that would make Gran Gran smack him on the tip of his tongue. But then he hesitated, because…

Because that was… a good question.

Sokka didn’t know where Aang was headed half the time when he was on Appa’s back with him. Honestly, sometimes it seemed like even Aang didn’t know...

The thought sank into the pit of his stomach. He had _no idea_ how he was going to find them again. They had to be headed to the Earth Kingdom to find Aang an earthbending teacher, but the Earth Kingdom was _huge_ , and they had a flying bison, while Sokka was… wherever he was.

He squinted at the horizon, trying to imagine the outline of Agna Qel’a’s walls in the distance. There was nothing but ocean, ocean, and more ocean, everywhere he looked.

Had Aang and Katara left without him? He didn’t think they would. Were they waiting for him, or… or were they out looking for him? He glanced up at the sky. It was stupid, the little stab of hurt he felt when he saw nothing but clouds. He squinted, just to be sure, and then pointely looked away, before his disappointment could show on his face.

Sokka cleared his throat. His answer was the same, either way.

“I’m not helping you,” he said.

“I have no interest in you,” Zuko said. “Cooperate, and we’ll let you go. Eventually.”

Yeah, right. Like Sokka would trust him. He didn’t even dignify that with a response, pointedly rolling his eyes away. There… wasn’t really anything else to look at, other than the empty ocean and the flotsam on the waves. Sokka watched the splintered edge of something flip and sink beneath the surface. He couldn’t tell if it had belonged to a Fire Nation or a Water Tribe ship before it disappeared.

“Perhaps if you untied him, he would be more amenable to questions,” Iroh suggested. He just smiled, entirely unfazed, when Zuko whipped around to glare at him, too.

“No,” Zuko said immediately. “If he answers our questions, we’ll find the Avatar, and he can be untied _then_.”

“I’m not betraying my friend,” Sokka said. He shifted on his knees, trying to take some pressure off his aching shoulders with a new angle. “Turn around. Take me back to the North Pole.”

“There’s nothing back there for you,” Zuko said. “Your _friend_ has left without you by now.”

“They wouldn’t…” Sokka trailed off.

No. That was… they wouldn’t leave without him. He’d only been gone for a few hours. They’d be looking for him. They…

Sokka glanced at Iroh. The look on his face solidified the thought forming in the back of his mind, dread creeping in like frost.

“Oh,” Sokka said quietly, with the weight of Iroh’s gaze sinking straight through him.

He thought of the ocean spirit, the wall of water crashing over them, the shattered ships sinking into darkness.

He thought of the warmth of that hand on his shoulder, gone in an instant, disappearing with the current.

“My sister thinks I’m dead, doesn’t she?” Sokka said. “They think I drowned.”

Zuko didn’t answer. He just frowned at Sokka like there was something confusing about his reaction.

“Your sister loves you,” Zuko said. He sounded almost uncertain, gaze cold and searching. Sokka scowled at him, and Zuko turned away. “Good. Then she’ll trade you for the Avatar.”

“No, she won’t,” Sokka insisted. What was _with_ this guy? Hadn’t Zuko already tried kidnapping them before? It hadn’t worked when he hired those stupid pirates, and it wasn’t going to work now. They weren’t going to just—trade their friends like bargaining chips. Sokka grit his teeth. “I don’t care if they left without me. Take me back to Agna Qel’a. I’ll—find my own ship.”

Yue would help him, at least. He didn’t know what had happened to Hahn or the other men. He hoped they’d made it out. He had no way to know, now, other than to go back.

He didn’t know what had become of the Northern Water Tribe’s ships after the battle, either. They… well, they must be better off than the Fire Nation fleet, at least. There had to be at least one ship that would take him to the Earth Kingdom, and… Sokka could find his way from there. He could do this, he _had_ to, because his sister was out there, and she thought he was dead, and she _needed him_.

“Take me back,” Sokka said again, feeling frustrated and desperate.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Iroh said. He said it gently, like he was speaking to someone very fragile. It made Sokka bristle with indignation as he continued, “We were fortunate to escape the first time, given the circumstances.”

“The circumstances,” Sokka repeated.

An anxious pressure was building in his chest. He tried to swallow to relieve it, throat dry and raw. Iroh’s expression was tense—a strange look on him, when Sokka had seen him chasing them with Zuko, and lecturing Zuko, and being screamed at by Zuko, and had _never_ seen him look so unsettled. There was pity there, too, and that was what made Sokka’s heart leap, with the idea that they knew something Sokka didn’t and it was something _bad_ , worse even than the battle and the destruction in the harbor.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sokka asked. “What did… _what did you do_?”

Zuko turned to Iroh, expression grim. Iroh shook his head.

“What do you remember from last night?” Iroh asked.

“The ocean spirit protected the city,” Sokka said.

“The Avatar protected the city,” Iroh corrected. “The ocean spirit leant him its power, and in exchange…”

He trailed off and turned his gaze toward the sea, and the wreckage bobbing on the waves.

Sokka closed his eyes. The image of the ocean spirit, alight with energy, breathtaking and powerful as the ocean itself, had burned into his mind. He tried to picture Aang, then, inside it, tearing apart Fire Nation ships like paper, shredding them to pieces. His heart sank, because… what would Aang have done after, once he’d seen the devastation in the harbor, and…

Oh, no.

He’d told Aang where he was going. He’d blame himself for what had happened. He’d think it was his fault.

 _He’d think he’d drowned him_.

“Why?” Sokka asked. “Aang doesn’t… He’s just a kid. He wouldn’t...” Sink dozens of ships to the bottom of the ocean, he wanted to shout, but apparently… apparently Aang would, if something pushed him far enough.

Sokka leaned up on his knees, frustration simmering to anger. “What _happened_?”

Iroh sighed. Zuko looked—tired, more tired than Sokka had ever seen him. He glared very resolutely at the spot above Sokka’s shoulder.

“I think you had better sit down,” Iroh said.

Sokka pressed his knuckles against the wood, barely holding himself upright. He couldn’t feel his fingertips, prickling, a sweeping numbness seeping into his limbs and his chest as the horror of Iroh’s words crept up on him. He tried to—something, deny it, but he just made a strangled, disbelieving sound.

There was pity in Iroh’s gaze, and that was enough to push the sweeping chill down, to light him up with something angry and desperate instead.

“You _killed_ the moon!” Sokka shouted. “And Yue—”

“Zhao killed the moon. Not us,” Zuko said.

“ _The Fire Nation_ ,” Sokka spat back. They’d snuck into the city like cowards, and—it didn’t make any _sense_ , the Fire Nation needed the moon, too. His lungs ached, from the water and the cold. Now a seething disbelief was settling in his chest too, choking him.

(He’d thought he was hallucinating.)

Sokka hadn’t been this angry since… since his mom, since the raids, since his dad left him behind.

(If he’d been there, could he have stopped her?)

“Come away from the edge,” Iroh said, not unkindly.

Sokka hadn’t even noticed moving back, as far away from them as he could shift on such a tiny raft, but he was dangerously close to the water now. The kindness was almost worse. It felt like they’d burned him out, like he was just a hollow shell, still smoldering.

“Just,” Sokka said. He wanted to stay angry, but his voice came out choked, breaking on the word. He didn’t want to look at either of them, but… they were still Fire Nation. He didn’t want to turn his back on them, either. “Stay away from me.”

Sokka was—he couldn’t even look at them. He laid down, curled in on his side with his temple pressed flush against the cool wood, and drew a shuddering breath. Heat pricked at his eyes, an uncomfortable pressure, but he was just… so tired, like a dam splintered with cracks, ready to break—

They left him alone while the sun sank below the water, and the moon rose.

Iroh had fallen asleep hours ago, snoring quietly.

Sokka was almost thankful for the cold, and for the uncomfortable angle of his hands bound behind him. It made it easier to stay awake.

He drew his knees up to his chin. The moon looked the same. Sokka wasn’t sure why he’d expected it to look any different, just that… it felt like it should, like the change should be obvious, so the rest of the world could know it had changed, too.

On the other side of the raft, Zuko shifted. Sokka could feel the weight of his gaze. He kept doing that—turning, staring quietly. He probably didn’t trust himself to fall asleep while Sokka was still awake. Good. That made two of them.

Sokka turned and glared at him.

“What,” he said, jarringly loud in the silence. “What do you want?”

Iroh shifted at the sound but didn’t wake. Under the light of the near full moon it was easy to make out Zuko’s expression. Understanding it was harder, bruised face twisted into a slight frown. He didn’t look suspicious, or really wary of Sokka at all, which didn’t explain why he kept staring at him.

“Nothing,” Zuko said immediately. He grimaced, turned to look elsewhere—the sky—then quickly thought better of it. “Just—”

He cut himself off again. Sokka waited—he wasn’t feeling particularly patient, but he didn’t have anything else to do, other than watching the moon’s slow crawl across the sky.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said, quietly. He glared at the deck as he said it, so that Sokka might have missed it, if he hadn't been watching Zuko so closely.

It was hard to tell whether he was trying not to wake his uncle or hoping that Sokka wouldn’t hear him. “About your girlfriend. I wasn’t there when it happened, but… if it makes you feel better… the ocean spirit took Zhao in the end.” He paused a moment, then even quieter, he added, “I couldn’t stop it.”

Sokka hesitated for so long that Zuko had already turned away, expecting no answer.

“That doesn’t make me feel better, no,” Sokka said.

More people dying didn’t fix anything, not even horrible Fire Nation soldiers, not even if they deserved it. _Especially_ if Aang would blame himself for what had happened. It wouldn’t bring Yue back.

Zuko nodded tightly. Sokka was quiet for a moment, but now that Zuko had broken the silence, another thought was clawing its way past the grief threatening to choke him. Sokka latched onto it, because at least it was something else, something productive instead of painful.

“Zuko,” he said, hesitantly. “Where are you taking me?”

How many days’ sailing was it from here to the Fire Nation? Sokka had been so disoriented when they’d first pulled him out of the water, he was lucky to tell up from down. Now he peered at the partly overcast sky, trying to make sense of the pinprick stars, so different from the ones back home. He’d seen Iroh tuck a sun compass into his sleeve earlier. He wondered if Zuko knew their heading, now.

“We’re headed for the Earth Kingdom,” Zuko said. “You’re going to tell me where to find the Avatar.”

A lump rose in Sokka’s throat. It was hard to tell whether it was relief that they weren’t taking him back to the Fire Nation, or worry for Aang and Katara. Traveling on Appa, they might be long gone by the time they even reached the Earth Kingdom. Part of him hoped so, that they’d find Aang’s earthbending teacher and escape before Zuko could even find their trail.

And a more selfish part of him wondered, if they _did_ get away, if he’d ever see them again. Wondering if his little sister even needed him to look out for her anymore, now that she was a master waterbender. Wanting, maybe stupidly, to be there for her anyway.

Maybe he was better off just—lying to Zuko, distracting him. Sokka could tell him he knew where Aang was, lead him on a wild goose-hare chase, and then—

The thought churned his stomach, shame at the thought of leaving Katara alone, and something dangerously close to loneliness. It must have shown on his face, because Zuko clicked his tongue and made a frustrated sound, like he was already expecting another one of Sokka’s defiant refusals to help him.

But then when Sokka glanced at him, he didn’t really look frustrated. Tired, mostly, and… strangely regal, kneeling with his legs tucked under him, back straight and mouth firm, gaze cutting. Sokka swallowed.

“You…” Zuko said haltingly, voice pitched low. Quiet, so he didn’t wake his uncle, or gentle—

No.

Voice pitched low, just so he didn’t wake his uncle, Zuko said, “You should sleep. A man needs his rest.”

Sokka watched dully as the battered wreckage of the Fire Nation ships drifted past them, tracing patterns where they bobbed on the waves. There wasn’t much left—most of it was too heavy to float once it had been torn apart, tons of metal swallowed up by the sea. A few pieces floated by. Flags. Crates, freed from their holds, still watertight and bobbing jauntily on the currents. A few times his gaze caught on other things, floating, soft-edged and lumpy, and he quickly glanced away, unwilling to look closer.

In the end, Sokka hadn’t slept at all during the night, watching the moon on her slow arc through the sky. He let his eyes slip closed now. He was exhausted, deeper than he could fix with sleep. The ocean was strangely still. It made his skin crawl, imagining what lay beneath the surface.

He slept in fits, dreaming of Yue, dreaming of Aang in the Avatar state, glowing blue with the ocean spirit’s light, dreaming of hands grasping him in the dark—

Sokka snapped awake to rough hands dragging him toward the middle of the deck.

“—enough sleeping,” Zuko said.

Sokka glared at him, disoriented. The moment Zuko saw that he was awake, he turned away to snap at his uncle. The back of Sokka’s coat was damp—well, more damp than it already was—where rough water had slapped against the boards.

He shivered as a gust of wind caught the loose edges of his hood. When Sokka leaned up to squint at the late afternoon sun, he found that the clouds were already swallowing it. The ocean rolled, ominously green with the setting sun, biting wind snapping the sails.

Sokka watched the sky as the night drifted in with the storm. Zuko was checking the ties holding the tiny bags they’d brought with them to the deck with a single-minded focus.

“Perhaps the ocean spirit will not be so quick to forgive, after all,” Iroh said, eyeing the grey-black clouds gathering on the horizon with a grim frown.

That was—so stupid. A storm was a storm. Sokka had to bite his tongue to keep from saying it, because…

...well, because he’d seen first-hand what the ocean spirit was capable of, so maybe that wasn’t just superstitious nonsense. He glanced up at the slowly darkening sky. A little flicker of nervousness clenched at his chest. It was too overcast to see the stars, the white light of the rising moon dulled behind the gathering storm clouds.

This raft was pathetically small. Storms at sea were _dangerous_. The ocean was frighteningly powerful—even when it wasn’t holding a grudge.

Zuko shot his uncle a look and grumbled something under his breath. The deck was already slick with the icy spray of the ocean, the mast thinly coated in frost. Steam whipped away on the wind as Zuko climbed up to balance against the yard. Water sluiced over the deck, soaking Sokka to the knees. He flinched at the cold and shifted closer to the mast.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Sokka asked.

Zuko didn’t answer him, but he’d definitely heard him with how violently he tugged on the line. Sokka had no choice but to sit there and balance on his knees as a dangerous swell rocked the raft.

The wind had only just started to pick up, but already it was fighting him for control. Halfway to furled, a strong gust caught the edge of the sail. Zuko swore as the line ripped out of his hands, snapping in the wind, sending the whole raft tilting dangerously. Sokka yelped, sliding on his back toward the raft’s edge. He twisted, fingers scraping against the slick wood, but he could hardly get a grip with his hands tied.

Zuko and Iroh both dove for the line at the same time, throwing their weight against it. The wind changed at the same moment, tossing the raft back in the other direction. Sokka landed hard on his hip, closer to the center mast again, breathless.

The sails snapped angrily in the wind as Zuko hauled them the last few feet to tie them off.

Iroh was tying off the other line when the next wave crested. Sokka leaned down, chest pressed against his knees. He took a deep breath—for all the good that would do him if he fell in with his hands tied behind his back, and the terror of that thought almost knocked the wind from him, anyway.

Rain bounced off the deck, hard enough to slap him in the face from below. The next wave swelled up in front of them. Sokka barely heard the shout over the roar of the rain—Zuko’s uncle, warning him to hold on—

A hand closed around his arm, yanking him back. Sokka choked back a shout, as the wave wrenched him in one direction, the hand around his arm in the other. After an impossibly long time, the ocean let go. Zuko didn’t.

Sokka coughed, his whole body shaking with the effort. Zuko’s hand felt like it was burning his arm, too warm against his icy skin. He turned toward Zuko, gaze fixed on the grim line of his mouth. His eyes burned from the salt.

“You have to untie me,” Sokka said, fear and frustration bleeding into his tone. It felt like drowning all over again, pushing the emotion down past the sharp ache in his lungs.

For a moment it looked like Zuko hadn’t heard him. Sokka drew a shaky breath.

“I said—”

“I heard you,” Zuko said, hand tightening on Sokka’s arm. “The answer is no.”

“I can’t hold on like this!” Sokka shouted back. It was hard to hear him over the roar of the wind, as the raft rocked dangerously under the swell of another wave. He grit his teeth as the water washed over them. Zuko’s hand tightened painfully on his arm. “ _Please_. I can’t swim with my hands tied behind my back. If I fall in, I’ll drown!”

“If I untie you, you’ll try to escape,” Zuko said.

“Escape _where_? Where do you think I’m going to go?” Sokka asked. “We’re on a raft in the middle of the ocean!”

Zuko met his gaze for a long moment, jaw so tense his teeth could crack. Sokka stared resolutely back. A few flyaway hairs lashed against his face, cheeks raw from the wind and the cold. His heart was pounding in his ears, matching the roar of the waves. Zuko ground his teeth impossibly tighter, and fire flashed between them.

“ _Fine_ ,” Zuko snapped. He made no move to untie him. Instead he grabbed him by the collar, dragged him so close that his hot breath washed over his cheek. Inches apart, he could feel the warmth radiating off the firebender’s body. An involuntary shiver wracked his frame. It was—so not fair, that Sokka was freezing, and they were _warm_ , when this was all their fault to begin with.

“Listen to me very carefully,” Zuko said, dangerously low. “Just because I’m untying you does _not_ mean I’m letting you go. I _will_ capture the Avatar. Do not test me.”

Not if Sokka had anything to say about it he wouldn’t, but now wasn’t the time to be honest. Sokka nodded tightly.

“I get it,” he said. His voice was rough from coughing up seawater, strained. Sokka hoped it hid the tension, the hint of defiance in his tone. “Now _untie me_.”

Zuko glared at him a moment longer. Finally he let go of Sokka’s arm to pat the front of his coat, feeling for—something, a knife, maybe, to set Sokka free. Behind him, Iroh was struggling with the storm sail. Sokka saw Iroh tense and turn to look for Zuko. Sokka followed where his gaze had been, toward whatever made him flinch—

“ _Wave_ ,” Sokka said, breathless at the size of it, and Zuko’s gaze snapped up.

Zuko swore. Knife forgotten, he hooked his fingers beneath the rope. Sokka yelped at the sudden, searing heat against his wrists, light flaring on the rain darkened deck. It _hurt_ , one white-hot flash before the wave crashed over them.

The water spit and shrieked from the heat of Zuko’s fingers, but he’d burned through the rope enough for Sokka to jerk his hands free. His shoulders screamed at him, stiff from being pulled back for so long. He grit his teeth through it, fingers scraping raw against the deck. His hand found a loose line, torn free by the wave. Sokka held on as the water dragged away—

His other hand flew, without his permission, toward Zuko. He caught him by the hood—nearly caught him by his stupid ponytail—and hauled him back just before the swell of water could wash out to sea again.

“Zuko!” Iroh shouted, while Zuko ripped himself out of Sokka’s grip and crawled further up the deck. Sokka just let him go.

Sokka’s fingers were clumsy, numb from disuse and cold. He edged closer to the mast and wrapped his arms tightly around the ropes to hold on. He could feel the heat radiating off Zuko beside him. Zuko heaved a breath and the worst of the frigid water hissed off of him in clouds of steam. It washed over Sokka in a wave, a flash of warmth against the icy wind.

Sokka closed his eyes and leaned very slightly into Zuko’s shoulder—because it was cold, and he was warm, and Sokka wanted to live through the night more than he wanted to keep his pride. He expected Zuko to shove him away, but he didn’t, only sighed another hot breath and braced himself, perfectly still, for the next wave.

By the time the storm broke and the winds died down, the sun was fighting with the overcast gray sky. Sokka was soaked to the skin, shivering. He forced his stiff fingers to uncurl from the rope with a wince.

Sokka pressed a thumb against the burn on the inside of his wrist, just above the raw lines where the ropes had chaffed his skin.

He met Zuko’s gaze, drawn like a held breath. Zuko’s hand flexed against his knee, tensing like he was readying himself for a fight.

But then he sighed, an impatient sound, and the tension eased just slightly. Zuko staggered to his feet, so that he was towering over him when he spoke.

“Don’t get too comfortable. We’ll make landfall eventually,” Zuko promised, voice carefully even.

He turned away to free the furled sails. Sokka watched him for a moment, still on edge, unsure why, because this was good, and he was free—at least for now.

And then Sokka stood and grabbed the line, too, with his gaze fixed steadily on the horizon.


	2. Chapter 2

Sokka could feel the press of the leather sheath on his thigh. He flexed his leg, barely moving beneath the length of his coat, still carefully out of sight. Sokka had to bite his cheek to keep his expression even. If Zuko had searched him for weapons, he hadn’t done a very careful job of it. He may have lost his boomerang to the ocean, but he wasn’t totally defenseless, as long as he still had his knife, tucked beneath the layers of his clothes.

The real question was what to do with it.

He definitely couldn’t beat them in a fair fight. The odds really weren’t in his favor, two-on-one against a couple of firebenders with only a knife that he’d never used for much more than whittling. He wished he had his boomerang, or his jaw bone knife at least, instead of the thin little blade hidden beneath his clothes.

So no, he couldn’t beat them in a fair fight, not on a raft this size, with nowhere to maneuver and no way to strategize. 

But an unfair fight—

They were all tired after the storm. Iroh was snoring loudly, dead to the world. Zuko was asleep, too, rolled onto his side, face turned toward Sokka as though he didn’t quite trust him with his back. He’d stayed awake for hours, staring at Sokka through the darkness while Sokka feigned sleep, until he’d finally given in and closed his eyes. 

Sokka scraped his boot over the deck, testing. Neither of them so much as stirred at the noise. 

Sokka considered, again, the knife strapped to his thigh. He could…

He…

Oh, who was he kidding? Of course he couldn’t. 

Sokka sighed, and the sound was swallowed by the rhythmic swell of the sea. He rolled onto his back to try to get some sleep. 

“Wake up,” Zuko said. 

“Mm, wh—” Sokka swatted Zuko’s hand away. “What, I’m awake, what? More… another storm?”

Sokka blinked at the sky, but it was perfectly clear. When he glanced back at Zuko, he was still crouching over him, expression hard. The bruises on his skin had begun to darken and turn green around the edges. He looked… tired. 

“Tell me how to find the Avatar,” Zuko said. 

Sokka stared at him. He turned and squinted at the sun, just barely breaking over the horizon. 

“ _Now_?” Sokka asked. He smothered a yawn, but not the incredulous look he was giving Zuko. 

“Now,” Zuko said. 

“There’s something wrong with you,” Sokka said. 

“The day’s started,” he said. 

“Your uncle isn’t even awake yet!” Sokka said. 

“No, he’s not,” Zuko said pointedly, talking to Iroh now, “Because he’s nothing but a _lazy old man_.”

“We have a long journey ahead of us, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. If he was offended by Zuko calling him lazy, he was being remarkably gracious about it. Then again, Zuko was a spoiled _jerk_ , so Iroh was probably as used to his insults as Sokka was unsurprised by them. “A fire which burns too hot burns out quickly. Perhaps patience—”

“I’ve been plenty patient!” Zuko snapped. 

“You can’t talk to your elders that way,” Sokka said. 

“Don’t tell me how to talk to my uncle,” Zuko said. “Tell me where to find the Avatar.”

“Look, let me save you the next six hours of your time,” Sokka said. “I don’t know where Aang is. I don’t know where he’s going next. I’m _not_ helping you. Now go away and let me sleep!”

“No,” Zuko said, and jabbed the stupid toe of his stupid boot into Sokka’s side—

“You know what?” Sokka snapped. Sokka rolled to his knees. He knocked Zuko’s hand away before he could grab for him, and snatched the hilt of his knife from underneath his coat. Zuko’s good eye widened, and he flinched backwards. Immediately he brought his hands up into a bending stance, but he looked wary to come closer.

 _Good_. Now that he was out of Sokka’s space, he could stay there. Sokka dug the knife into the wood of the deck, instead of into Zuko’s neck like he so clearly expected him to, and pettily held eye-contact as he dragged it from one side to the other. 

“ _There_ ,” Sokka said. 

“Where did you get that?” Zuko snapped. Sokka waved the knife at him, taunting.

“I guess you weren’t very thorough when you searched me—hey!”

Zuko grabbed his forearm with one hand, so quickly that Sokka didn’t even get the chance to fight him for it, and pried the knife out of Sokka’s hand with the other. He tried to snatch it back, but Zuko only shoved him away. 

“I’m not letting you have a weapon,” Zuko said. “You’ll cut our throats while we sleep.”

Sokka made an indignant noise, a bit offended, and absolutely not about to admit that the thought had crossed his mind. 

He’d regret losing the knife later, probably, but he couldn’t bring himself to care now. Something about Zuko just got under his skin, and the way he glared at the line in the deck like it had personally insulted him? Absolutely worth it. 

“What’s this supposed to be?” Zuko asked

“What does it look like? It’s a divider. I’ll stay on my side, you stay on yours,” Sokka said.

Zuko sputtered. 

“You’re our prisoner. You don’t get a _side_ ,” Zuko said. “It’s our ship!”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re _all_ trapped here,” Sokka said. “You can’t just decide I’m your prisoner. Maybe you’re _my_ prisoner.”

“That’s—stupid! You’re outnumbered!” Zuko shouted. 

“Leave me out of this,” Iroh said serenely, still attempting to sleep, or pretending to. 

“You’re the prisoner!” Zuko said, as though Iroh hadn’t interrupted. “You agreed when I untied you!”

“Well, _that’s_ stupid,” Sokka said. “Who would actually agree to that?”

“Who— _you_ did! You gave your word!” Zuko said. 

Technically he’d said he understood, not that he agreed to Zuko’s terms. Somehow Sokka doubted he would appreciate the nuance. He seemed genuinely offended, fists clenched tightly. Despite himself, Sokka felt a little stab of guilt—

No! Sokka was not going to feel _bad_ about refusing to be his prisoner!

“Hey, I didn’t ask for you to drag me onto your stupid raft, okay? Now if you’ll excuse me—” Sokka shoved Zuko’s foot pointedly over the midline, back onto their side of the divider, “—the day hasn’t started yet on _this_ side of the raft, so I’m going back to sleep.”

“This is stupid! There are two of us, and only one of you,” Zuko said. “And it’s my ship! At the very least, we should get more space than you!”

Zuko slashed another mark in the wood, further still from the center mast, anger making his cut a bit crooked. 

“Fine!” Sokka shouted. “Now leave me alone.”

“Fine!” Zuko shouted. 

“Wonderful,” Iroh said. “Now if you boys don’t mind, perhaps we could have some quiet.”

Zuko was glaring at the line. He had been for the past half-hour, maybe realizing that his new mark was still far from an even, three-way split. 

For royalty, he apparently wasn’t much of a negotiator.

Then again, the Fire Nation didn’t _negotiate_ for anything. They just took what they wanted. Like the Earth Kingdom's land. Or the Avatar. Or _Sokka’s knife_.

Sokka glared at the knife in Zuko’s hand. He caught him staring, and turned to very pointedly jam it into the wood on the far corner of the raft, next to where his uncle was still trying to sleep. Sokka rolled his eyes away, before it could show on his face how truly irritated he was—he didn’t want to give Zuko the satisfaction. Sokka scrubbed his palm over the lump where the empty sheath sat on his thigh. He huffed, lying down.

The silence stretched thin, turning very quickly from tense to awkward. Sokka shifted uncomfortably. Not that he was uncomfortable with Zuko’s… Zuko’s _pouting_ , because he wasn’t. He was just wide awake now, and annoyed that Zuko’s shouting had managed to wind him up so much. Iroh, infuriatingly, had started snoring again.

Zuko huffed, as though he’d shared the same thought. He threw himself down in the corner of the raft and jerked the knife out, then stabbed it back into place, a restless motion. He was going to ruin the blade that way—probably didn’t care, since it didn’t belong to him. Sokka shot him another glare, but Zuko wasn’t even looking at him anymore, so it wasn’t at all satisfying. 

He was the most obnoxious, infuriating person Sokka had ever met. He clenched his teeth and barely resisted saying something that was as likely to get him set on fire and thrown overboard as it was to make him feel better. Whatever. The less talking they did, the better. He was just going to ignore them until they reached the Earth Kingdom. He’d have until then to plan an escape.

Sokka’s stomach growled. He crossed his arms stubbornly and rolled over. He’d been too tired to even think about it, before, but now that they’d gotten through the storm, and he was relatively warm and dry, and had slept, his appetite was very loudly making itself known. 

Iroh had offered him water last night before he’d fallen asleep, from a metal canteen packed into one of his bags. The cap had hissed faintly when he’d unscrewed it, and the water had been warm, heated from a frozen block between his hands. 

He hadn’t offered him any food. He’d been tempted to complain—the Water Tribes would treat their prisoners much better, he was sure—but… Sokka hadn’t seen them eat, either, and had thought better of asking when they’d all gone to bed hungry.

He wished he’d eaten a bigger meal before the mission. Really, he wished that he had his bag, with his seal jerky carefully wrapped up in the bottom. He’d left it behind for the sake of their Fire Nation disguises. It was probably for the best, anyway. His bag probably would have met the same fate his boomerang did when the wave hit. At least maybe this way Katara could…

No, she’d probably just hold onto it as it was, and not even touch any of his stuff. The thought made his heart ache more than his stomach. He turned his gaze back out over the water. 

They’d been sailing for a few days now, at least—the exact number was a bit fuzzy, because Sokka was missing some time there, and it wasn’t like he was going to ask Zuko about it. He’d watched the debris floating on the water thin as it drifted off or finally succumbed to the waves and sank, but a stubborn little cluster of junk seemed caught in the same current as they were. 

The sea vultures had been distracted, before, when they were closer to where the ships went down. They were following them with lazy interest, now, the only living things not yet swallowed by the sea. 

Most of what remained was from the Fire Nation ships. He’d seen a few Water Tribe blues, much less frequently, washed out to sea from the bay as the ocean spirit passed. Sokka regretted letting them pass by, but the sea had still been too choppy from the storm, and the wind had carried it off before he could get a closer look.

This time, he was ready for it, the colors snagging his eye even before his brain fully registered what he was looking at. 

“Wait,” Sokka said, sitting up so quickly that it made his vision wobble, “is that—?”

Zuko tensed and looked up at the sky, immediately suspicious. Sokka waved his hand and pointed out over the water, toward the dark blue outline bobbing along on the waves. 

Sokka shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted at the wreckage. It was so badly damaged that it took him a long moment to tell what he was looking at, but… yes, that was definitely part of a Northern Water Tribe boat, and it was _close_ , drifting closer on a cross-current. He sucked in a breath, excitement bursting in his chest.

“Bring us closer,” Sokka said. 

“No,” Zuko said. “This is _my_ ship. You don’t get to make demands.”

“Would you just—” Sokka said. He groaned in frustration. “Why are you _like_ this? Actually, I don’t care. I don’t need your permission.”

Sokka tugged his coat off over his head. The sea was calm, the wind hardly more than the occasional gentle breeze, but the cold stung his skin anyway. There were purple bruises blooming on his arms and shoulders, tinting green and yellow around the edges. He was sure his back looked worse, because it definitely _felt_ worse as he peeled off his coat. He grit his teeth against the urge to shiver and quickly bunched his coat up to set down far from the edge. Spirits, this was such a stupid idea—

“What are you doing!” Zuko shouted. 

Sokka glanced up. Zuko was—so angry he was getting a little red in the face. Sokka rolled his eyes and ignored him, shucking his top layer along with his coat, until he was down to just his undershirt and pants. _Fuck_ , it was cold. He made quick work of his boots, too, kicking them off into the pile. 

Sokka considered the pants too, then decided against it. They were double-layered with a thick lining, so while it wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable to be wet, he wouldn’t freeze, either. 

With any luck, Sokka wouldn’t have to stay wet for long, but he shuffled his coat aside where it would stay dry, just in case. He wasn’t going to risk freezing to death with a wet coat just because Zuko was too stubborn to warm him up. He’d be a little uncomfortable, but he’d live. 

It was still _way_ too cold for swimming, so he had to be quick. 

He braced himself for the cold. Even ready for it, the shock punched the air out of him. Sokka surfaced quickly and took a gasping breath. 

“You can’t escape that way,” Zuko shouted after him as he started to swim. “That boat’s not even seaworthy! You’ll drown for real, this time!”

Sokka ignored him. He wasn’t sure he could have answered, anyway. It felt like the cold had stolen the air from his lungs. 

Zuko wasn’t kidding about the boat’s seaworthiness. The keel had cracked, swollen from the water leaking in. The rails on both sides had been torn off, probably from the force of the waves during the storm. It was a wonder it was still floating, maybe only saved because the mast had been torn off too, lightening the fishing boat’s load. 

He breathed a sigh of relief. One peek over the side told him it hadn’t been occupied when the ocean spirit swept it away, seats covered with a waterproof animal hide to protect it from the snow. It must have been docked when the wave hit, because the whole housing for the line was torn off, the empty well of it pooling with slush. 

Sokka pulled himself up over the side, arms shaky with the cold. It sank a few inches into the water, more so when he tried to rise onto his knees. He leaned over on his elbows and reached for the ties at the bottom of the boat. He had to scrub his palm over the edges to melt the ice on the ropes. His skin prickled from the friction. He had to watch his fingers undoing the knots, already numb, until he’d worked it loose enough to pull the whole cover off, ties and all, without tearing it. He grinned a little, triumphantly. _Sokka’s_ side of the raft was done sleeping on the sea spray-damp wood, thank you very much. 

He wrapped the hide up into a tight bundle, and then dug down beneath into the storage. The bait traps were empty. Sokka hissed a frustrated breath at that, but it was fine, because he could make do on his own. He pulled out the little wooden case at the bottom, wrapped tight in another turtle seal hide to keep it dry. He shook it a little and grinned as its contents clattered dully inside.

He wasn’t very graceful swimming back, sluggish from the cold and awkwardly trying to keep his spoils dry. 

Zuko looked torn between being angry because he didn’t know what Sokka was doing, and angry because Sokka wasn’t listening to him, so—he looked completely normal. Iroh was watching them both with a concerned frown, apparently startled awake by Zuko’s screaming. 

Sokka sloshed water onto the deck and over Zuko’s boots, entirely on purpose, when he hauled the case and the bundled hide up onto the raft. 

“Don’t t-touch my stuff,” Sokka said. He snatched his knife from the corner of the raft where Zuko had left it, and then quickly ducked back before he could stop him. The swim back to the Water Tribe boat was much shorter this time, now that Zuko had stopped being stubborn and moved the raft to follow him. 

There was a net hopelessly tangled on the inside of the boat. The corners were dotted with little decorative knots, hours of work to tie each one. If he’d been in the Northern Water Tribe longer, he might have recognized who it belonged to. Sokka cut each of them away one by one to loosen the tangles enough to pull the net free, a little sorry to ruin their hard work, but mostly regretting the way the un-anchored ends immediately started to unravel. He didn’t have much energy to wonder if he was cutting away the work of a dead man, when he was as close to being one himself. His fingers were clumsy as he gathered the loose ends in one fist, leaving only the slightest gap.

Sokka drew a deep breath. 

The hull of the fishing boat was crusted with barnacle oysters. They were an annoying pest, clinging easily to the soft wood of the Water Tribe boats and making them drag in the currents. It was a pain to scrape them all off, especially so when the rest of the men had gone to war, and Sokka had been the only one left for the task, and hauling even their littlest fishing boats out of the water had been much harder with just him and Katara to manage it. 

The important thing was that they were edible, though, and the gills were good for fishing bait—at this point, the plump little nuisances looked about as good as a steaming bowl of sea prunes. 

His eyes stung from the salt. The knife bit into the pad of his thumb as he pried a particularly stubborn one loose, but the ache of the knick was blunted by the cold. Sokka dropped a few more into the net as he worked around toward the keel. He could still hear Zuko shouting at him, muffled beneath the surface. Sokka resisted the urge to roll his eyes, focusing on his task. 

Sokka turned to swim back toward the raft, raised voices growing louder as he swam upward. 

“—won’t save you if you’re drowning! Do you hear me! I’ll… is he… Uncle, do you think he’s—?” Sokka broke the surface, and Zuko cut himself off. He fixed Sokka with an absolutely withering glare. 

“Get back on the raft,” he demanded, and grabbed him by the forearm to haul him out. Sokka let him, because he was starting to feel a little uncoordinated, and it was awkward wrestling with the net full of barnacle oysters without spilling them.

“D-dry me off,” Sokka said, once he was back on board. Zuko glared at him, and at the net—which was really just a tangle of strings at this point, barely holding together enough to carry the barnacle oysters. He would have to re-weave it. He crossed his arms.

“I’m not letting you have a weapon,” Zuko said, as though he hadn’t even heard him. 

Sokka sighed. It took him a few tries to slip the knife back into its sheath with the way his hands were shaking. Shit, it was cold. He set it very pointedly on his side of the raft, next to his coat. 

“Not _that_ ,” Zuko snapped. 

And then Sokka realized what he was talking about, and that Zuko hadn’t _listened to him_. Sokka whirled around to find his case, and realized that Zuko had moved it over into the corner of his side of the raft. 

“Hey!” Sokka said. He moved to stand, but Zuko side-stepped him. 

“I told you n-not to touch my stuff!” Sokka said.

“I’m not letting you have a _spear_ ,” Zuko said.

“Too bad I d-don’t _care_ whether you let me or not. And it’s… ugh, it’s for fishing!” Sokka said. “Now, d-dry me off!”

“Prince Zuko,” Iroh started.

Zuko whirled to jab a finger at him, “ _No_ spear.”

“I was merely going to suggest you let him warm up, first, before continuing your argument,” Iroh said. “He’s turning a bit blue.”

Zuko whipped back around to glare at Sokka, like it was his fault that it was freezing outside, never mind that Zuko could very easily solve that problem for him. Sokka rolled his eyes.

“You know, you’re one one who’s been c-chasing us around trying to kill us,” Sokka said. “I should be worried about _your_ weapons.”

“I was never trying to kill you,” Zuko said. “I never would have bothered with you at all if you weren’t hiding the Avatar—”

“Are you going to dry me off or not?” Sokka asked. 

“No,” Zuko said. 

“Yes,” Iroh said. 

“ _Uncle_ , would you stop—” Zuko snapped. He threw his hands out, and Sokka jerked back from the little involuntary flash of fire. Zuko clenched his fists immediately and the flames choked out. He caught Sokka’s eye, caught him stepping back, before he jerked his eyes away to glare at his uncle instead. 

Zuko tucked his fists under his arms, defensive, and kept glaring at his uncle like he expected him to fight him. Sokka took another step back, frustrated at Zuko for being stubborn, and at himself for flinching. 

“ _Ugh_! You know what?” Sokka said. “ _Fine_. Whatever. Fine!”

Sokka peeled his undershirt off and tossed it onto the deck with a wet splat. Zuko made a flustered sound, when the impact sprayed water all over his pants. Sokka ignored him and yanked his dry clothes back on. It stuck uncomfortably, and he was still _freezing_ with his wet pants, but at least the biting wind wasn’t quite so bad anymore.

“Give me back my case,” Sokka said, tucking his hands under his arms. 

Zuko’s eyes narrowed. “Only if you give _us_ half of your catch.” 

“That’s—fine,” Sokka said. It’s not like he was going to keep it all to himself, anyway. He shoved the net into the middle of the raft. A few of the barnacle oysters slid out the top, clattering as they skipped across the deck. Zuko blinked at them, and Sokka nearly burst out laughing at the look on his face. “You don’t know how to eat them, do you?”

Zuko scowled, and crossed his arms. “Well, how are _you_ going to cook them?”

“Maybe you can eat them raw,” Sokka said. “Maybe I just won’t tell you.”

Zuko looked like he was three seconds away from setting something on fire. Sokka could practically imagine the steam coming off of him, and bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the thought. He didn’t want Zuko to set _him_ on fire… even if the warmth was sounding pretty appealing right about now. 

Sokka grinned, all teeth. Zuko’s eyebrow did an annoyed little twitch, and he knew that he’d won.

“I’ll teach you how to prepare them… _if_ you dry me off first,” he said.

Barnacle oysters were, technically, edible raw. The texture was a little chewy, though, and poaching them helped to cook out some of the grit. Anyway, they were much better served warm, plumped up in a nice fish stock, or fried in tiger seal fat…

Of course, they didn’t have a nice fish stock, or tiger seal fat, or really anything to eat them with other than seawater and more seawater. Iroh _did_ have a dented little tea kettle to boil water in, so that would have to do. So far, they’d only used it for boiling fresh water, but Sokka was glad Iroh had brought it along, even if Zuko had gotten a _little_ shouty when he’d learned his uncle had remembered to grab a kettle, but hadn’t had time to grab any food.

“I’ll show you how to shuck them, if you think you can trust me with a knife,” Sokka said. 

“I don’t,” Zuko said immediately, but he didn’t stop Sokka from drawing his knife out of his sheath. 

“Well, I don’t really care,” Sokka said. He picked up the first oyster, and jammed the knife under the shell. “So just twist your knife like this…”

Iroh hummed with interest as Sokka demonstrated. Zuko shot him an annoyed look but, grudgingly drew his own knife and followed along. 

At least, he tried to.

“Keep the gills when you’re cleaning them,” Sokka said. He glanced at Zuko’s hands, and the poor barnacle oyster falling victim to his first shucking attempt. He nudged Zuko’s fingers away. “I said keep the… no, the gills, the…” He pointed. “The _gills_. They make good bait, so don’t throw them out. Put them in a little pile, here.”

Zuko huffed, annoyed, but surprisingly didn’t complain as he carved around the gills. Sokka dug down to the bottom of the box. There was a little soapstone jar tucked away in the bottom corner. The jar was empty, and it smelled faintly greasy from whatever kind of bait it once held. He scraped the gills inside, the little cut on his thumb stung from the grit inside the shells. Then he slid over next to Zuko, and started shucking his own pile.

Split three ways, it only took them a few minutes to finish. Iroh was better at shucking than Zuko, probably because he wasn’t as prone to getting stabby when the blade stuck. Still, there were surprisingly few casualties—only a handful of weirdly diced ones, from Zuko’s first couple attempts, but otherwise all intact. Gran Gran would be proud. 

“Grab that kettle,” Sokka said. He could just get it himself, but it was on _their_ side of the raft, and Sokka was going to follow his own rules. Zuko rolled his eyes as he stood, and when he came back he sat very pointedly on his side of the line.

Sokka had to admit, it was a little weird actually _asking_ Zuko to firebend, but he couldn’t complain about the results. This was a luxury that Sokka hadn’t really thought about before, but _man_ , it must be nice to have warm food any time they wanted. Why couldn’t Aang have mastered firebending first? They could have been having hot meals this whole time, not just when there was enough space and time for Appa to land to build a campfire. 

Zuko scooped up some water and settled with the kettle in his lap, hands pressed flat against its metal sides. Sokka scraped the cleaned barnacle oysters into the top. Zuko wasn’t exactly what Sokka would call a master of self-restraint, so he’d probably overcook them.

Sokka watched them until little bubbles climbed up the metal walls, and the edges of the barnacle oysters curled, half-expecting something to flare up into his face. He glanced at Zuko, but he was completely focused on the pot. His face was drawn in careful concentration, expression pinched around the fading bruises. Zuko inhaled steadily, breath steaming faintly as he exhaled, and the water began to gently boil. 

So apparently the angry, shout-y firebending _wasn’t_ the only kind he could do.

“That’s enough,” Sokka said. 

Immediately, the bubbles stopped, and the steam curling out the top disappeared. Sokka poked the water with his pinky, but it was only luke-warm. 

“Neat trick,” he said, and then picked out one third of the oysters with his fingers, ignoring how Zuko scrunched his nose at him. Sokka stuck two into his mouth while they were still warm. They tasted like the ocean, but only kind-of in the way they were supposed to.

It wasn’t the most dignified way to eat, not that Sokka cared. Zuko was probably used to fancy palace dining, though, with servants cooking for him and dishing his food, a far cry from picking vaguely gritty, unseasoned barnacle oysters out of a pot with his fingers. Zuko picked one and bit into it. Sokka snickered at the face he made. 

“Not a fan?” Sokka asked. 

“It’s fine,” Zuko said immediately. The face he made when he ate the next one was even funnier, very carefully stoic, as though not liking barnacle oysters was some vital weakness he needed to hide. 

“My sister doesn’t like them that much, either,” Sokka said. “Although, that might just be because we ate them so much when I was a kid. My dad showed me how to harvest them when I was… five? Six maybe? And I was so excited to show off my new skills that I probably scraped every single barnacle oyster off of every single surface in the whole village. Anyway, we ate basically nothing but barnacle oysters for a week straight, and then Katara threw up.” 

Zuko barked a laugh at that, which startled a laugh out of Sokka too, because—what the hell? He didn’t even know Zuko was capable of laughing, except maybe in an evil, maniacal way. 

He caught himself a moment later, like he’d just now realized he shouldn’t be laughing with the enemy. Sokka grinned and popped another one in his mouth. Zuko quickly picked out a few more oysters, curling his fingers around them like he was trying to hide them from view. 

“Here, Uncle,” he said, handing the kettle over. Sokka watched Iroh peer into the kettle. He picked out exactly one-third, and handed the kettle back. Zuko scowled, and hesitated, and finally took the last two from the bottom. 

“I still like them, though,” Sokka said after a moment, when they’d dropped into silence to eat. 

The quiet wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been when Zuko was shouting, or angrily stabbing barnacle oysters with a knife. Still, Sokka wracked his brain for something to say to fill the silence. 

“So what happened to your face?” Sokka asked. 

Zuko froze. He shot Sokka an absolutely withering glare, and the change was so abrupt from their previous truce that for a moment Sokka was startled. 

_Oh._ Sokka flushed. He’d thought he’d meant—that was so rude, he wouldn’t just— 

“The bruises! I meant the bruises,” Sokka added. Zuko kept scowling at him, but Sokka thought he might have relaxed a bit, too, a bit more like the same grumpy jerk he was used to, and a bit less like a pissed off snow leopard fox. 

Zuko didn’t answer him, though. He just kept glaring, until Sokka’s embarrassment had faded into awkwardness. It seemed like Zuko was just going to keep ignoring Sokka and let him stew in the uncomfortable silence, but—

Zuko huffed. 

“Pirates,” he said. 

Well _that_ sure wasn’t what Sokka had expected him to say. 

“Sounds like there’s a story there,” he said. 

“Not really,” Zuko said. “Zhao hired them to kill me. They blew up my ship. I lived.”

“That’s stupid,” Sokka said. What kind of idiot would hire pirates to kill their prince, and not expect any consequences? Maybe he was lucky, being taken by the ocean spirit. Sokka doubted the Fire Lord would have mercy on a man who tried to murder his own son, admiral or not. 

“He hates—hated me. I don’t know why,” Zuko said. 

“Well, it couldn’t _possibly_ have been your sparkling personality,” Sokka said. 

“Shut up,” Zuko grumbled, but there was no heat to the words. It was almost… not quite friendly, but something close. Sokka supposed eating together when you were starving could put anyone in a good mood. Still, it made him think, maybe, if they weren’t Fire Nation, maybe—

Well, they _were_ Fire Nation. It would be hard to forget that.

It was significantly warmer with the turtle seal hide cover laid out over the deck. The hide wasn’t quite wide enough to stretch across the whole raft, but it was pretty big. Sokka was a nice guy, so he lashed it down roughly in the middle of their little divider-line, tied off against the wind. 

Zuko continued to wake him at unreasonable hours of the morning, sometimes before the sun had even _risen_ , and every morning Sokka reminded him that no, he wasn’t lying about knowing where Aang was, and no, he wasn’t helping him anyway.

It was infuriating, but the fishing was better in the morning, at least, and Zuko was blissfully quiet afterwards, meditating with his uncle, both of their faces turned toward the sunrise. 

Sokka hadn’t caught anything the first day, or the day after that. Collecting barnacle oysters only worked for as long as there was debris for them to attach themselves to, and that were growing more and more rare as they drifted into the open ocean. 

He finally speared something on the third day. It wasn’t small, but it might as well have been, after he had split the catch three ways. It didn’t matter—even if Sokka could keep it for himself without having a mutiny on his hands, he wouldn’t. 

He cleaned the fish and saved the guts. Zuko had even stopped complaining about the smell, which Sokka thought they could owe to hunger overriding his natural instinct to be a contrary jerk. It was going to be a long voyage, if this was all they could do for food, and anything that would give them an advantage was worth trying.

“What was _your_ plan for food, exactly?” Sokka asked, once he had divided the fish into three equal pieces, with Zuko supervising over his shoulder the entire time. Zuko passed the first piece to his uncle, and then pressed the second one between his hands until it started to sizzle. 

Sokka didn’t think he’d ever smelled something as delicious as that piece of plain, unseasoned fish. 

“We were going to figure it out,” Zuko said. 

“Fasting and meditation,” Iroh said, blowing on his piece of fish to cool it. “This is much better. Thank you.”

Zuko handed the cooked fish over to Sokka. He yelped and fumbled the freshly seared piece into his lap. Sokka hissed at him, sucking his burnt fingers, and Zuko smirked as he picked up the last raw piece, fresh flames curling in his palms.

Sokka re-wove the net into a slightly smaller, definitely uglier net and hung it off the back of the raft. Maybe if they found somewhere with better fishing, they could fill the net with a live catch, fresh fish to tide them over when the waters got lean again. That was assuming they could find enough to eat to actually have leftovers. Considering their luck so far, Sokka wasn’t going to hold his breath. 

Sokka was used to skipping meals—had been used to it, especially in the winters after the men left. When they’d joined Aang it was more practical—no money to waste, and no time to stop with Prince Zuko so hot on their heels.

He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the gnawing emptiness, though. He kind of wished he would get used to it—at least then, he could ignore it, instead of getting distracted thinking about the hunger, or his next meal, or thinking about _not_ thinking about it. He kept catching himself half-way to a complaint before he remembered that Katara wasn’t here to listen to him whine, and Zuko and Iroh wouldn’t want to hear it. 

It was such a clear day that the sunlight was distracting, so bright off the water that Sokka was reminded of being dazzled off fresh, white snow. He was the only one that seemed to be bothered, though, one hand over his eyes to block the glare. 

Sokka had the other hand loosely wrapped around one of the lines, just in case the waves got any rougher than they already were. The wind was strong today, too rough for fishing, but it was surprisingly warm. 

Sokka knew that wasn’t a good thing. That meant they’d drifted far enough south for the weather to change, closer to the Earth Kingdom, but Sokka was just glad to have one less thing to complain about. He was warm, and only the manageable kind of hungry that he could ignore if he had something to distract himself with. 

There weren’t a ton of distractions, when it was too windy to spearfish, so he’d turned to his unwilling companions.

“—so then we all climbed into the mail chutes, which, by the way, are about a zillion feet tall, and have absolutely no guardrails. I mean, I guess they don’t really expect people to be riding down them, but still, accidents happen, you’d think they’d at least have something to keep people from falling,” Sokka said. “Or mail from falling? I wouldn’t want one of those stone carts falling on my head.”

He paused, considering whether this counted as the sort of state secrets he didn’t want to be spilling to the Fire Nation. No, right? What were they doing to do with intelligence on their postal system? Anyway, Aang seemed pretty confident that Omashu was untouchable, and even if the Fire Nation _did_ try something, it wasn’t like a crazy strong bender like Bumi would just sit back and do nothing. So. 

“So anyway,” Sokka continued. “Of course we’re going _way_ too fast—”

“Are you going to keep talking until we reach the Earth Kingdom?” Zuko asked. 

Sokka cracked his fingers apart so he could squint at him. He knew he had a tendency to ramble, but he was bored, and hungry.

“Maybe,” Sokka said. “What else is there to do?”

“Be quiet?” Zuko suggested.

“How about _you_ stop eavesdropping,” Sokka said. “I’m talking to your uncle. This is a private conversation.”

“ _How_ am I supposed to—”

Sokka turned very pointedly to Iroh, ignoring the rest of Zuko’s complaint. Zuko’s face turned a shade redder. 

“So, what’s it like in the Fire Nation?” Sokka asked. Iroh at least didn’t seem to mind the conversation, or the sudden topic change. He leaned forward and stroked his beard.

“It is a beautiful nation,” Iroh said. “With a rich history of—”

“Yeah, yeah. But what’s it _really_ like?” Sokka insisted. 

“Humid, mostly. And the citizens are very,” Iroh paused, considering, “structured.” 

“So it’s miserable and uptight,” Sokka translated. 

“Better than freezing and undisciplined,” Zuko grumbled. Sokka scoffed. He was not going to rise to that obvious bait, because he was not even talking to Zuko, anyway. 

Iroh had pulled the sun compass from his sleeve again. The compass’s dial cast a long, stark shadow under the midafternoon sun. Sokka leaned forward for a better look as Iroh twisted the dial, aligning the markings with the shadow.

“Will you show me how to use that?” Sokka asked.

“No,” Zuko said. 

“Of course,” Iroh said, laying the sun compass out on his palm. “It’s really quite simple.”

“Uncle,” Zuko said, exasperated. “You can’t teach our prisoner how to navigate.”

“I already know how to navigate,” Sokka said testily. “I’ve just never seen a compass like that before.”

“Don’t worry, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. “So long as I keep the compass on my person, what’s the harm? It’s not as though he would steal it from me.”

It’s not as though he _can_ steal it from me, Sokka thought that tone implied. 

It wasn’t like Sokka wanted to steal from Iroh, anyway. He was just curious, and bored. He hadn’t been dwelling on the way the weather was growing steadily warmer, or how long it had been since they’d last seen land, or the way they’d navigated away from the last remnants of the Northern Water Tribe days ago. And he certainly hadn’t been thinking that if anyone had been looking for him, they would have found him by now.

Sokka edged closer, and Iroh smiled at him indulgently as he held the compass to the light.

Sokka stared at a fluffy cloud, slightly fluffier than the other cloud he’d been staring at for the past hour. Variety. He sure was spoiled. 

How many days had it been? Spirits, he’d lost count.

Sokka groaned and rolled over. He felt like a sea prune that had been left to dry in the sun. He licked his stinging lips and tasted metal.

“Do you want to play a game?” he asked. 

In a testament to how truly bored he must be, Zuko only squinted at him for a moment before asking, “...what game?”

Sokka shrugged. “How about a guessing game. I’m thinking of something...”

“Ocean. Raft. Cloud,” Zuko said. 

“Yeah, maybe that’s too easy,” he allowed. Sokka cast his eyes around for inspiration. He hummed. They didn’t really have a lot of options, or much room to move around. He was too tired to do much moving, anyway. 

“We could,” Sokka trailed off. He picked at one of the sinew ties on the hide and unwound it. “We could play a string game.”

“That sounds stupid,” Zuko said. 

“You’re such a jerk. You don’t even know what it is yet,” Sokka said.

Zuko paused. “Go on, then.”

Sokka looped the string around his hands. How did this go again? It had been a long time since he’d played. He tried to remember Gran Gran showing him and Katara when they were kids... 

After a moment he offered it up for inspection. “See? You can make little string figures with the...” he trailed off. Zuko was staring at him blankly. He gestured at the shapes with his pinkies where he wasn’t holding the string, and added, “It’s a tuna whale and a snow leopard fox.”

“Hm,” Zuko said, wholly unimpressed. Sokka bunched the string up and threw it at him.

“Whatever! I don’t know why I even bothered,” Sokka said. “I’ll just go back to staring blankly at the sky. Even that’s more entertaining than you.”

“If I may offer a suggestion,” Iroh said. “Perhaps a nice game of Pai Sho.”

Zuko groaned. Sokka perked up, doubly intrigued after Zuko’s reaction. 

“How do you play?” Sokka asked. 

“I’m afraid I don’t have a game board, since my traveling kit met an unfortunate end with our ship. But I’m sure we can make do,” Iroh said. 

They’d marked out the vague outline of the board on the deck with Sokka’s knife, and broken up little pieces of barnacle oyster shells for tiles. It took Iroh a while to explain the rules with their makeshift setup, and they had to use their imaginations in deciding which bits of shell represented which tiles, considering they all basically looked the same. 

Iroh only had one real piece, a lotus tile that he produced from his pocket for Sokka to inspect. 

“Pai Sho is a game of both strategy and chance,” Iroh said. “Though I have found patience to be an invaluable asset when facing a particularly formidable opponent.”

Well, that certainly explained why Zuko didn’t like to play, considering that he didn’t seem to have a patient bone in his body. Sokka turned the tile over in his hands, running his thumb over the delicately carved edge. It was a bit worn, like he’d had it for a long time. He wondered how often Iroh played. 

Sokka handed the lotus tile back to him. He considered the board again. Iroh had described a few possible opening moves, and how they might affect gameplay. Sokka started with something conservative, considering he was still learning. Iroh hummed his approval. 

“How is that fun for you?” Zuko asked. Despite his lack of enthusiasm when Iroh suggested Pai Sho, he’d been watching them the whole time they set the game board up. He squinted at Sokka’s first move, the little pile of shells by his knee, and then rolled his eyes away.

“Would you like to play the next round, Prince Zuko?” Iroh asked. 

“I’d rather play with the string,” Zuko said. 

Sokka lost the first three games. He won the fourth, and then proceeded to lose several more. 

The silence they settled into was almost comfortable. It was… nice.

Sokka watched the bird wheeling around above them, dread sinking in between his ribs. It was the first bird he’d seen in over a week, ever since they’d gotten far enough from land that the sea vultures had given up on trying to wait them out. Sokka turned then and looked at Iroh. He sighed and shook his head. 

Zuko was watching it with him, his face an unreadable mask. If he had any hesitance, any sympathy at all, he didn’t show it.

“You’re tired,” Zuko said plainly, like they weren’t all tired, and thirsty, and starving. “This doesn’t have to be a fight.”

 _I will make it a fight if it needs to be_ , his tone clearly said. Sokka turned back toward the sky. It was a cranefish, he thought. They tended to stick to the coasts, hunting mostly in brackish waters. 

They’d probably spot land in another couple hours, if the wind held. Hours, then, until they were close enough for Sokka to swim for shore. If he tried...

No, he’d never make it. Zuko was right. He _was_ tired. 

He could try to fight. Sokka eyed Iroh again, calm, a look of vague disapproval on his face, but still watching the exchange silently as it played out. Even if he didn’t approve—he’d take Zuko’s side. 

(Katara could have fought them, maybe waterbended her way to shore, escaped…)

Sokka was just… normal. He couldn’t take two firebenders, even if they were tired and thirsty and half-starved. He grit his teeth.

Sokka glared at Zuko and didn’t respond. He just offered his wrists while Zuko turned to cut a length of rope to size. 

What a waste of a perfectly good net.


	3. Chapter 3

Sokka eyed the harbor inlet with dread. They’d been following the coastline for hours, with nothing but stark palisades for miles and miles, blanketed in a thick forest of fiery orange trees, and nowhere for them to safely land. Iroh and Zuko had been strangely unbothered by the harsh landscape. They’d seemed almost excited to see it, though Sokka couldn’t fathom why.

He understood now.

The scent of cherry blossoms drifted out over the water, errant petals churning in the rough surf along the shoreline. The bay was edged with sharp rocks, dampening the tug of the currents. There were a few iguana seals sunning themselves on the rocks as they entered the harbor. Just the sight of them made Sokka’s gut twist with hunger, but the moment the animals spotted the raft they disappeared beneath the waves.

There was a building peeking out over the ridge at the top of the waterfall. Sokka’s heart sank.

That was Fire Nation architecture. Those were Fire Nation ships in the harbor, too, docked along the wharf—not military, but unmistakable in craftsmanship, anyway. They’d reached the Earth Kingdom, clearly, but whether it was bad luck for Sokka or good planning from Iroh, they’d landed along the occupied territories on the northernmost coasts—Fire Nation colonizers on Earth Kingdom soil. 

He’d stripped out of his heaviest layers days ago, when the weather had warmed enough that his coat was impractical. Even further south, though, the wind on the open sea had been biting. Now, here on the very edge of the coast, as close to the North Pole as they could get on the Earth Kingdom mainland, the cliffs blocked the worst of the high winds. He’d already begun to sweat.

Or maybe that wasn’t from the heat. Sokka shifted uncomfortably. At least his hands were tied in front of him this time.

“We’re quite lucky,” Iroh said amiably, as the currents carried them in toward the wharf. “This resort is famous for their hospitality.”

“Yeah. Some luck,” Sokka grumbled, unable to help himself. 

Iroh’s attention slid over to him, then, eyes soft, almost sympathetic. Sokka scoffed and shook his head. He frowned resolutely at his bound hands, instead. Zuko glared at him—just to be a jerk, Sokka supposed—but he quickly turned his attention back to the sails. 

“This isn’t a vacation,” Zuko said. “We’re leaving as soon as we have the supplies.”

They’d arrived at a good time, with the currents drawing them easily into the bay. Good for Zuko and Iroh, anyway, though not so good for Sokka. If they’d been a few hours later, they’d have lost the favor of the currents, and they might have had to wait until nightfall for the tides to shift again to avoid bashing themselves on the rocks.

Sokka might have had more time, then, to think and plan his escape.

As it was, they made their way easily to the docks. Compared to the other ships, their raft was laughably small. They looked ridiculous, floating up to the dock on what was basically just a rotting pile of driftwood at this point, lashed together with some mismatched rope, moving under the power of a single tattered sail and, Sokka suspected, the excess air blowing out of Zuko’s gigantic head. 

Zuko acted like he didn’t even notice how absurd the situation was—if anything he seemed to wind even tighter when the doors to the boathouse at the end of the pier swung open, and a few curious spectators poked outside. The raft had barely come within reach of the dock before he was hauling Sokka to his feet. 

Zuko dragged him off the raft by the elbow. Sokka stumbled on the edge of the slick dock as he pulled him along a bit too quickly. 

“I can walk on my own,” Sokka said. He tugged back, insistently.

“I know you can,” Zuko said. He tightened his grip. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

There were several men watching their approach at the end of the dock, eyeing them with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Compared to the rest of the docked ships—a merchant vessel, a fishing boat, and what looked like a passenger ship—their tiny, dilapidated raft was probably a strange sight. The boathouse door swung open again, more forcefully this time, and the harbormaster stormed out. 

“Hey!” he shouted, irritation dripping in his tone. “You can’t dock here without...”

The harbormaster trailed off when his eyes landed on Zuko’s face. He glanced between him and Iroh and back again, and then he went very, very pale, realizing who he’d just been shouting at. He dropped into a deep bow. Zuko cut him off before he could finish his apologies. 

“Fetch the owner of this resort,” Zuko said. 

He dragged Sokka past without stopping, just assuming the man would do as he was told. Spirits, he was the worst, just shouting at people and bossing everyone around. Sokka tried to catch the man’s eye as he passed, but he wouldn’t look at him. The men at the end of the dock were the same, all bowing politely, all very pointedly pretending not to see him, like their prince really was just here for a spa visit.

They followed the winding staircase up the cliffside. The stairs were slippery with scattered cherry blossoms, bunched in thick piles and damp with the cast-off spray from the waterfall. Zuko kept a vice grip on his arm the whole way, which Sokka was honestly a little grateful for, though he would never admit it. It was a near sheer drop onto the rocks and trees below, and Zuko walked with himself between Sokka and the trees on the other side, like he didn’t fully trust him not to try to make a break for it into the rough cliffside forest. 

Which… Sokka would have, if he’d had the chance. Zuko glared at him the whole time, watching him like a hawk as though he’d read Sokka’s mind. 

He’d never outrun Zuko with his hands tied, anyway. 

The stairs ended in a long wooden bridge. Zuko crossed it without waiting for his uncle to catch up to them. The resort itself was built on the river, the dull roar of the falls muffled behind its walls. 

Positioned where it was against the stark cliffside, it almost reminded Sokka of the hamlet villages on the western coasts of the South Pole, winter homes built on stilts along the cliffside. There was no comforting familiarity in the resort’s architecture, though. 

Maybe it could have been beautiful, if the sight of it didn’t fill him with anger for what the coastal community might have been, decades ago, before the Fire Nation. The resort was like a wound on the mountainside—a growth that didn’t belong.

The other resort patrons stared much more openly than the men on the docks had. Sokka tried to gauge their reactions, the ones who seemed intrigued by his presence, the ones who shot him pitying looks. Would any of them help him, when he made his escape? 

They quickly glanced away when Zuko turned their way, so… no, probably not. 

Zuko half-lead, half-dragged him past hot springs and cherry blossoms, past men with their sleeves tied back giving massages who stopped to stare surreptitiously over their tables. Sokka didn’t blame them—they must look terrible, after three weeks at sea, and this place looked fancy in a way that probably didn’t cater to any old salvage that had washed up on their shores, and it must have been even stranger to see their prince so out of sorts. 

There was a woman with a high topknot at the front desk who bowed so low when they approached that her forehead nearly grazed the wood. She kept her eyes down, even after she’d risen from her bow, in a way that clearly showed that she was pretending not to see what was happening. 

Sokka scowled at her, not that she would know. 

“Your highness,” she said. “We’ve prepared the royal suite for your arrival—”

“No,” Zuko said, cutting her off. “I want the room on the second floor, on the east side of the building.” He fixed Sokka with a firm, meant-to-be-intimidating look, which meant this was his strategic, escape-proof choice. 

Sokka scoffed, and pointedly glared back. Like _that_ was going to stop him. 

The woman hesitated, then cleared her throat.

“Of course,” she said, as a second woman scurried out from behind the counter and disappeared up the stairs. There was a booking calendar on the desk that the woman pulled closer. She struck the most recent note from her ledger, and moved to mark his reservation—

Zuko dropped his hand over the page, halting her brush. For a moment he only stared at it, idly smoothing the edge with his thumb.

Sokka leaned over his shoulder to look, but… all she had written was the date. 

Zuko caught the movement, caught Sokka eyeing him curiously, and scowled. 

“Let’s go,” he said, shoving Sokka toward the stairs with a little more force than necessary. Zuko was annoyed, maybe, that he’d wasted so much of his precious Avatar hunting time trying not to die out on the open ocean.

 _Good_ , Sokka thought vindictively. They led them to a room on the second floor. Three women bowed out the door just as they arrived, looking terrified at having been caught in the act, like Zuko would expect the room to have been ready for him before he’d even demanded it.

The room was huge—much too big for three people. Zuko seemed almost annoyed by it, like he didn’t know what to do with the deference.

“I’m going to go talk to the staff,” Zuko said. “You’re going to _stay here_. And when I come back, you’re going to tell us where to go next.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t _know_ where Aang is headed!” Sokka said. 

“You’ve had plenty of time to think about it,” Zuko said. “Make an educated guess.”

Sokka grit his teeth. The problem was that he _did_ have some idea of what Aang might do next. He needed an earthbending teacher. Knowing Aang… he’d probably want to choose someone he trusted. From here, it was a long way overland to Omashu, but with a flying bison they could make the trip fairly quickly. It made sense that Aang would ask his friend for help.

He’d never tell Zuko that, though. He’d throw himself back in the ocean first. 

Zuko’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, like he could tell what thought had just crossed his mind. Sokka just glared back, stubbornly. He had to know that Sokka wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

“Look,” Sokka said. “We made it to the Earth Kingdom. _You_ would have starved without me...”

Zuko scoffed. “We would have been fine.”

“You can just let me go,” Sokka said. “We’ll call it even.”

“Call _what_ even? I don’t owe you anything,” Zuko said. “You would have _drowned_ if I hadn’t pulled you out of the ocean.”

“We don’t _have_ to be enemies,” Sokka said. At least, it had seemed that way before, when they were still on the open ocean. 

Sokka felt immediately stupid for saying it, worse when Zuko frowned, almost confused. The look on his face made his stomach churn with embarrassment, then anger. Spirits, Sokka was just—stupid. 

It had almost seemed… like maybe they were starting to get along on the raft. Well, obviously not. They’d spent weeks together cooperating, and not killing each other, and Zuko had gone and ruined it, like their careful truce didn’t mean anything to him. 

Sokka was annoyed with himself, too, for laughing with them, and telling them about himself, when Zuko—

Whatever. He didn’t care. He just needed to get out of here.

“You’re right. We don’t have to be enemies,” Zuko agreed. “But I have to capture the Avatar. If you would just cooperate, then we could let you go.”

“You don’t _need_ to capture Aang,” Sokka said.

“I _have_ to—” Whatever Zuko was going to say, he cut himself off. He clenched his jaw and half-turned away, so that Sokka couldn’t read his expression anymore past his stiff scarred side. “You wouldn’t understand. This has nothing to do with you, so why won’t you just…?”

Zuko made a frustrated noise and turned toward him again. He grabbed Sokka by the sleeve, dragging him up on the balls of his feet. 

“If you tell me where the Avatar is, I can let you go,” he said. “Isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want to go _home_? I can… I can even help you find your sister.”

“ _No_ ,” Sokka said.

Zuko dropped his sleeve like it had burned him. He grit his teeth.

“Then you’re a fool,” Zuko spat, and then he turned on his heel to leave. He slammed the door shut behind him, turned the lock with force, and stomped away. 

Sokka waited just long enough for Zuko’s footsteps to recede down the hall, and then he went for the window. He eased open the shutter just enough to peek outside. It was a sheer drop to the courtyard below, but he was only on the second floor. He… might be able to climb down with his hands tied, if he had to, but he doubted he could do it quietly. 

Zuko had locked him inside, but more importantly, he’d be pretty conspicuous trying to escape, half-starved with his hands tied in front of him. Too bad Zuko had wised up and taken his knife, and his spear, _and_ managed to find the sharp little piece of shell he’d tucked into his boot for safekeeping. 

There was a bath off to the side of the room. After so long adrift at sea, a warm bath sounded _amazing_. He couldn’t exactly undress with his hands tied though, so he settled for scrubbing the worst of the salt and grime off with a washcloth, awkwardly twisting his bound wrists to reach. He still felt much better, after, as much as he would have loved to sit in the bath and soak. 

There was a window in the bathroom, too. It overlooked the river, and was a much steeper drop, right up along the edge of the falls. Trying to climb down that way would be a good way to drown, and Sokka wasn’t particularly interested in doing that again anytime soon. 

He did a quick sweep for anything useful, but there was nothing, just blankets and futon rolls. The bathroom was just towels, fancy soaps and oils, but even that did him no good—his wrists were tied too tightly to slip out of his bindings. The only other door in the room led to a closet, empty save for a thin spare blanket, and a stack of spa robes like he’d seen the staff wearing. Sokka shut it again, frustrated. 

He was going to get out of here, he just needed to figure out how. This might be his only chance, while Zuko was distracted with securing himself a new ship, or supplies, or whatever it was he planned on doing. Zuko could be contacting his father _right now_ , for all Sokka knew, and he didn’t want to stick around long enough to learn what that meant for him. He needed a _plan_. He needed—

Someone knocked on the door. Sokka stared at it. Who knocked on a prisoner’s door?

“Uh,” Sokka said. “Come… in?”

It was Iroh, looking as cheerful as ever with a tray balanced in one hand. The door slid aside easily, so he must have found himself a key. He shuffled inside and pushed it closed behind him, then made himself right at home. He gestured for Sokka to join him at the low table, like that was a perfectly normal thing to do. 

“Are you hungry?” Iroh asked. 

Sokka _was_ hungry. They’d eaten nothing but unseasoned barnacle oysters and fish and more fish for weeks, meals spaced out too far, split three ways and much too small for anyone. Sokka eyed his tray a bit reluctantly. It was piled with rice and vegetables and a curry with meat, real chunks of meat, floating in a reddish-brown gravy. Just looking at it made his mouth water. 

Iroh smiled at him warmly and set the bowl down without waiting for Sokka’s response.

He was tempted to be stubborn, but the urge passed quickly. After weeks on a raft with nothing to eat but what they managed to catch for themselves, Sokka wasn’t about to turn down a meal. It was delicious, rich and spicy and so much better than charred, unseasoned fish. He felt like crying, a little. He was _not_ going to. 

Iroh settled down across from him, his own plate much lighter—six pinkish shells, settled in a half circle, with a shucking knife balanced on the edge. 

“Hermit oysters,” Iroh said. “Not quite as sweet, I’m afraid, but I seem to have developed a taste for them, anyway.”

Sokka eyed Iroh suspiciously, shoveling curry into his mouth. He didn’t know what this was about. 

Well, Iroh _had_ seemed reluctant to go along with Zuko tying him up again. Actually, he’d seemed a bit unhappy about it the first time, too. 

He hadn’t stopped him, though, so Sokka didn’t really _care_ how he felt about it. He shoveled another spoonful of rice into his mouth. Whatever. Iroh could make whatever excuses he wanted, or try to convince him to go along with Zuko, or who knew what else. Sokka didn’t care, because _Sokka_ was getting out of here, and he was doing it with a full stomach. 

Iroh seemed content to wait until Sokka was scraping the bottom of his bowl with his spoon before he spoke again. He set his own plate aside, hermit oysters still untouched.

“Are you finished?” Iroh asked. “If you’re still hungry, there’s plenty more in the kitchen.”

He _was_ still hungry. 

“What do you want?” Sokka asked instead. 

Iroh was probably just… here to keep an eye on him or something, to keep him from trying to escape while Zuko was off contacting his father, or securing them a ship. For all Sokka knew, he was contracting an _airship_ , because Sokka had heard rumors of the Fire Nation expanding their fleets ever since their attack on the Northern Air Temple. If he did that he could get to Omashu as the crow-finch flies, within a matter of days even. Sokka could _not_ let Zuko know where to find Aang.

“Are you certain?” Iroh asked. Sokka glared at him. 

He sighed heavily, with a patience that betrayed how unbothered he was by teenage glaring, which only made Sokka want to glare harder.

“Today is… a difficult day, for my nephew,” he said. 

“Seems to be going pretty well for him so far,” Sokka said. 

Iroh considered that. He hummed, quietly, and pulled the pai sho tile from his sleeve. He ran his thumb along the worn edge, contemplative as he considered his next words. Sokka drew himself up a little straighter, because even tied up he wasn’t going to just sit here and accept being their prisoner. Sokka was the son of a chief. He was a warrior.

He was _not_ going to be cooperative, that was for sure. 

“I know that to outsiders, my nephew’s actions can be difficult to understand,” Iroh said. “But there is good inside him.” 

Sokka couldn’t help but laugh. It sounded a little hysterical, even to his own ears. 

“Good _inside_ him isn’t enough! He wants to ransom me for the Avatar,” Sokka said. “He wants to turn the world’s _last hope_ over to the Fire Lord! You saw what they did at the North Pole. To—to Yue. How could anyone still be on their side!”

“Prince Zuko has had a very difficult life...”

“A difficult…?” He had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming in frustration, because that was just—

Sokka didn’t care how difficult his life was. _Sokka_ had a difficult life, and he’d managed not to be angry and obsessive and hell bent on ruining the whole spirits-damned world. _Sokka_ still cared.

“You know what? Forget your nephew,” Sokka said. “I don’t care about him. _You_ could untie me right now.”

Frustration bubbled in Sokka’s chest as Iroh gave him a steady look. He frowned slightly. Sokka had only really known him for a few weeks, but… Iroh had been kind, on the raft. Nice to talk to, through the boredom of days and days on the water. 

He was also the Dragon of the West. Sokka hadn’t forgotten that. 

So it was _stupid_ , how fiercely disappointment clenched in his gut when Iroh sighed and shook his head. 

“If I let you go now, Prince Zuko will never trust me again,” Iroh said plainly. 

“Good!” Sokka shouted. “Maybe if you stop enabling him he’ll just give up and go _home_ , and we won’t have to deal with him anymore!”

Something in Iroh’s expression twitched, just barely. In the absence of his own shouting, the quiet in the room felt heavy. Sokka’s chest heaved a little. He hadn’t noticed how worked up he was getting, only that the frustration coiling leaden in the pit of his stomach was almost making him regret eating so quickly. 

The silence stretched uncomfortably. _Good_. Sokka hoped he was uncomfortable. He deserved it. 

“My nephew is… not likely to give up so easily,” Iroh said at length. “Not without good reason.”

There were a million good reasons to give up, but they would only work on a _good_ person who actually cared about the world. Sokka didn’t know why he was even trying to reason with them at all. 

(Except that he did. He remembered how they were on the raft, but that had been a different world. That had ended the moment they’d spotted that cranefish, along with any chance of them _ever_ —)

The sound of shouting drifted up from the courtyard, muffled through the closed shutter. 

Iroh glanced at the window and sighed gustily. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said. 

Sokka stayed stubbornly silent, until Iroh had risen from his seat, and slid the door shut behind him. After a long moment of hesitation, Sokka heard the lock turn again, and only then did he relax. He scowled back at the spot that Iroh had just been sitting, as another bout of shouting pushed in through the windows.

At least Sokka had eaten. Iroh had left his own tray as well, hermit-oysters untouched, and...

Sokka sucked in a breath, excitement caught in his throat. Iroh had left his plate, with the hermit-oyster shucking knife poised daintily on the edge. He glanced quickly back at the door, but Iroh had closed it behind him, leaving him alone. 

Sokka crept quietly around the table, careful to keep his footsteps light. He didn’t know how far Iroh had gone, whether he’d gone all the way downstairs, or if they’d be able to hear his footfalls through the creaking floorboards. He could still hear Zuko’s voice through the window, still shouting at someone. 

The knife wasn’t very sharp. He had to hold it at an awkward angle to slide the blade beneath the ropes around his wrist. The chaffed marks from those first days on the water had long since faded, but the skin on his wrist was angry red again from struggling. He had to twist his hand at an awkward angle to get enough leverage. It took way too long, sawing against the ropes with his gaze focused carefully on the door, just waiting for Iroh to realize his mistake, or for Zuko to stop causing whatever scene he was causing in the spa and wander back upstairs. Sokka grit his teeth and ignored how the knife bit against his palm, drawing a hairline cut over the meat of his thumb because…

The rope finally gave, slack enough now that Sokka could shake his hands loose. His fingers prickled as the blood returned to them after so long pulling the ropes taught, and he almost fumbled the knife. Sokka stuffed it into his pocket. 

Zuko’s shouting abruptly cut off. Did that mean Iroh was outside, now? He considered the window, to check whether they were both out there… No, he couldn’t risk them seeing him, trying to lift the shutter enough to peek outside. Sokka crept to the door instead. He pressed his ear against where the sliding door met the frame. The hallway was quiet. 

The door was locked. Sokka snorted, hardly able to hold it in, because this wasn’t a prison, it was a spa, and the door was one of those stupid mullberry-shrub paper things that the Fire Nation loved, not the heavy wood and stone he’d seen throughout the Earth Kingdom. It was surprisingly sturdy, covered in some kind of resin to protect the paper thin material. Sokka cut a small slit with his shucking knife and pushed his thumb through the paper to widen the gap. He reached around for the latch. 

The door slid aside easily, opening into an empty hallway. 

Sokka paused briefly to change. He hated having to leave his clothes behind, but there was no way he could sneak through a Fire Nation resort looking so distinctly like a Water Tribesman. He brushed his thumb along the mended seam on his pants, where Katara had stitched the tear for him. He wished he had a bag to keep his stuff—but he couldn’t, and wasting time getting sentimental was only going to get him caught. 

Sokka shoved his fur coat under the futon rolls in the back of the closet, along with his pants and his boots. If they found him missing before he got away, he didn’t want them to know he’d changed clothes. 

It took a moment to figure out how the ties worked on the stupid robe. The sandals were the worst part—they definitely weren’t made for running—but wearing tiger seal boots beneath his robes would give him away. At least he looked the part, aside from the hair, which he could do nothing for except to untie his wolf-tail. He’d seen the other spa staff with topknots, but Sokka’s hair wasn’t long enough. He’d have to hope the laid-back atmosphere of the spa would be enough to keep them from wondering about the style.

The _last_ thing he wanted now was to run into Zuko. He walked quickly in the opposite direction from the front entrance. The whole entryway had been open to the air to let out the steam from the baths. If he snuck down the front stairwell, there was no way he’d make it past the courtyard without them spotting him. There had to be another way around. This place was huge! There _had_ to be, and, spirits, Sokka would settle for a window with a slightly less deadly drop, he wasn’t really all that picky, as long as it got him out of here without Zuko noticing—

Sokka turned the corner and ran headlong into someone. The woman squeaked in surprised and fumbled with the bucket in her hands, nearly losing her grip. She set it down heavily before she could drop it altogether. Water slopped over the edge of her bucket and onto the floor. It spattered across Sokka’s sandals, dampening the bottom hem of his stolen robe. He didn’t look down. 

He looked at her face, instead, pinned by the clear recognition in her expression. It was the desk clerk from before, the woman who’d offered Zuko their best room, and settled for giving him the one Sokka had just finished tearing a hole in. Her eyes were bright green, pale in the center, dark around the edges. They narrowed for just a moment, as the shadow of a decision crossed her face. 

And then she blinked and fixed him with a doe-eyed stare.

“My apologies,” she said. “This area is off limits to guests.”

Sokka waited, tense, for something more. He considered her words. 

“It’s… right,” Sokka said quietly. He blew out a soft breath. “I got… turned around.”

She cut her gaze quickly behind him, looking for something. “Well, there’s nothing through here but the stairs to the kitchen and laundry, and the service entrance past that, which opens up behind the resort,” she said, tone carefully polite. She nodded, just barely, toward the door at the other end of the hall.

She stooped and swept the spilled water off the floor with her rag in one smooth motion, then hooked it on the lip of her bucket and hefted it up again. 

“Enjoy your stay,” she said, and then she turned back down the hall like they’d never spoken. 

Sokka paused to thank her, but she was already walking away. He headed down the hall, instead. 

The stairs were cramped and poorly lit, so that when he pulled the hallway door shut behind him it was nearly too dark to see. He fumbled his way down the uneven risers, cringing at every creak and groan of the boards beneath his feet. Sokka nearly ran into the door on the other side, built so tight up against the last step that he knocked his knee against the wood. 

Sokka eased the door open slowly, in case the noise had drawn any attention to him. The kitchen was empty, thankfully, and incredibly bright after the near-darkness of the stairs. Sokka rubbed his palm against his eyes, then hissed under his breath when it irritated the cut on his thumb. 

The pain reminded him to move. Sokka crept over to the counter and swept a knife off the block—this one was longer, more like his jawbone knife, and Sokka wrapped it quickly in a dish rag before he cinched it under his robe. The cooks had left a meal half-prepped on the counter. There was a whole goose hen, marinating, surrounded by jars for its unfinished dressings. Sokka poked through three jars before he found one full of dried apricherries—he didn’t know how far the next town was, or how soon he’d find food, but the apricherries would travel well. After weeks of choosing between firebender-cooked fish and nothing, a little dried fruit suited him just fine. He stuffed a handful into his mouth, and the rest into his pockets, paused to drink a ladle of water from the sink, and then headed for the door.

On impulse, he plucked one of the empty bamboo baskets out of the stack by the door—just to give himself something to carry, something to make him look like he was busy with a task. Maybe, if they noticed he was missing, they might overlook him—

But he felt a little bad for stealing it, actually, so maybe he should put it back... 

No! No, he needed to focus on getting out of here and worry about the basket later. He could drop it off at the base of the stairs before he hit the main road, and it would find its way back up here when someone noticed it was missing.

The servants’ entrance opened up behind the resort, just like she’d said. The grounds weren’t as well tended back here, more functional than aesthetically pleasing. He skipped the path and cut straight through the yard to where the gate opened up. There, at the edge of the resort, his back was open to the front walk and the grounds beyond that, dozens of resort customers and staff, plus two firebenders he hoped were too distracted to notice him. Sokka stepped onto the bridge.

The roar of the falls was nearly as loud as the blood rushing in his ears. He was completely exposed out here. If Zuko looked this way he’d be certain to see him, and all he had for cover was a flimsy basket and a robe and his hair down to partly block his face.

It was a long drop to the river, a longer drop over the falls to the sea below. Sokka forced himself to keep walking, slow and unhurried. He was almost there. He could see the end of the bridge, and where the path wound down to the stairs leading to the wharf, where it branched off to the main road. There had to be a town nearby, with the amount of traffic the resort had—there weren’t enough ships in the wharf to explain the number of guests, otherwise.

If he could reach the town, maybe he could find himself transportation. This was Fire Nation occupied territory, but it was Earth Kingdom soil. There had to be someone out there that would be willing to take him. If not, he’d just split off from the road, and hope that he could get far enough away for Zuko to lose his trail. 

(Zuko was _unfairly_ good at tracking, though, so Sokka was really hoping for that transport—)

Sokka glanced up ahead and nearly slipped in his stupid sandals, barely masking his surprise and the sudden thumping of his heartbeat.

A group of Fire Nation soldiers was making its way up the stairs.

Shit. Shit, stay calm.

The soldiers weren’t running, or even moving quickly at all, so he doubted they were coming for him. He turned his head just barely toward the wharf, trying not to betray his interest. All of the other ships were gone, replaced by the single Fire Nation warship weighing anchor at the end of the pier. It must have fought its way through the unfavorable currents to get into the bay, and then scared off all the other ships to make room.

So this must be Zuko’s new ship, right? The one he must have set off to summon when he locked Sokka in his room. Sokka had _no_ idea how it had arrived so quickly, unless they had suspected that he’s somehow survived the Siege of the North and come looking for him—

Well, it didn’t matter, except that Sokka needed to get past them quickly before any of them realized who he was. 

It was too late to hide. Trying to turn back now would look extremely suspicious, and there was nowhere else to go from the bridge except straight on. Sokka tightened his fingers on the basket handle, feeling the tension in his muscles all the way up his arm. Then he breathed, and relaxed, and kept walking. He wasn’t the only other person on the bridge, and the rest of them were averting their gazes, too. Sokka tilted his chin down to hide where he was looking and watched them approach. 

There were half a dozen soldiers, all dressed in full battle armor. They _had_ to be here for Zuko—why else would they be dressed like this in their own occupied territory, if not to put on a front for royalty?

He almost didn’t notice the seventh person, a head shorter than the rest and walking at the center of the group. It was… a girl, dressed in Fire Nation colors, too, but by the time he noticed her he was too close to risk being caught staring. He fixed his gaze ahead instead, as they reached the end of the bridge at the same time.

“Excuse me,” Sokka said. He ducked his head, mimicking the respectful bows of the staff and moved toward the stairs.

“Just a moment,” the girl said. Sokka’s heart squeezed, but there was no way she could be talking to anyone but him. He paused at the top of the stairs, _he was so close_ , as she turned and gave him an appraising look. “Where are you going?”

Well, shit. It wasn’t like he could just ignore her. He turned to face the soldiers. His heart was pounding in his throat, but everyone else on the bridge seemed terrified of them, too, so maybe that wasn’t so suspicious. The girl looked much younger up close, almost Katara’s age, but still wearing full armor and a topknot, not a hair out of place.

She raised an eyebrow at him, expectantly, and he realized he’d hesitated for too long. Sokka grasped for the first answer that came to him.

“The market,” he said quickly, amazed by how level his voice was. “I—work at the resort. Supply run.”

He shifted the basket off his hip and shook it a little for emphasis. He didn’t have money, of course, so if she called his bluff he wouldn’t actually be able to buy anything. The girl nodded, lips pursed. 

“Hm,” she said. “Cut yourself, did you?” 

How had she noticed that? Sokka curled his sleeve around his wounded thumb before he could think better of it. 

“Barna… er, hermit oyster shucking,” he said. “I work in the kitchen. I’m—we’re out of… those, and some other things. Rice. Radish yams? Anyway, I’d better not keep them waiting.”

“I see,” she said. “A perfectly reasonable explanation for everything.”

Her words were—strangely loaded, her expression carefully polite. It made Sokka’s skin crawl, but… she didn’t do anything else, other than smile at him sweetly. She nodded to him, then turned to cross the bridge. Sokka’s heart was thumping in his ears as he reached the first stair. He was so close. The Fire Nation soldiers turned aside to let him pass. 

“Oh, silly me. Just one more thing,” the girl said. She tossed the words carelessly over her shoulder, but when she turned back, her gold eyes pierced straight through him, far too keen. 

Eyes just like— 

“Seeing as you’re so quick on your feet,” she continued, her voice sharp now, eyeing him like a hawk watching a sparrow-mouse, “Care to explain why a kitchen boy has rope burns on his wrists?”

Well, _shit_.

Sokka dropped the basket and ran. The Fire Nation soldier wasn’t ready. He grabbed for him clumsily, startled by the sudden shift. Sokka ducked under his arm, stumbled on the first stair and landed three down, but somehow managed to keep his feet as he kept going. The stairs were tall and narrow, sharp cliffs on either side, but he’d seen a little clearing about halfway up when Zuko was dragging him along. It looked less steep, and Zuko had tightened his hand on his arm like he’d expected Sokka to try for it, so maybe it would lead him somewhere more walkable than the stark cliffs bracketing the stairs. If he could reach the ledge he might be able to break for the trees—

A wall of blue fire slammed down in front of him. Sokka yelped and staggered back. He swore, tried to dive for the tree line anyway, to take his chances with the rocks along the loose basalt palisade. He didn’t make it. The soldiers dove down the stairs to seize his arms.

The girl followed after with deliberate slowness, her metal bootheels clinking against the stone. She paused in front of the discarded basket, then sunk her heel into the edge, crushing it beneath her shoe. She held Sokka’s gaze as the basket burst into flame, brilliant blue—she held it longer as the fire flared around her calf, lashing against her knee, thigh, and then snuffed out, leaving not a single burnt thread behind.

She eyed him for a moment, then clucked her tongue.

“Now who are _you_ , I wonder?” she asked. “Let’s go find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sokka: Zuko is the most dramatic person I’ve ever met.  
> Azula: You’re like a little baby. Watch this.


	4. Chapter 4

“This is ridiculous!” Sokka shouted. He stumbled as the soldiers dragged him back up the stairs. There had been a few people on the bridge before, but the whole area was completely deserted now, save for the soldiers and the girl and the scorch marks on the ground. His sandal slipped a little on the ashy remains of the basket. “I haven’t done anything. And… they’re expecting me back at the resort, too, so let me go!”

“Don’t insult me,” she said. “Now then. Who are you? Did my brother let you go? Or is he so incompetent that he allowed you to escape?” 

_Brother…?_

Sokka’s heart squeezed. Oh, this was so, so much worse than Sokka thought. 

She quirked one perfectly manicured brow. “I’ll take that to mean you escaped,” she said. 

Zuko was bad enough, and now there was another one? He jerked back against the hands on his arms, trying to break their grip. 

“Hm,” she said. “Search him for weapons.”

The soldier found the kitchen knife easily. He passed it to the man behind him, then pulled Sokka’s wrists together and cuffed his hands in front of him.

“Seriously?” Sokka asked. “You just carry those on you? I thought the Fire Nation preferred _not_ to take prisoners.”

He’d believed that. That was what the warriors would say, that was what he’d heard all throughout the Earth Kingdom, that was why his mom—

Well, clearly that _wasn’t true_ , at least not in Sokka’s experience.

“Let’s just say…” Her lips quirked, “You’ve caught me in a mood,” she said.

The soldier shoved him, forcing Sokka to take a step forward.

“Ah, ah,” she tutted, stopping Sokka with a hand on his shoulder. She gave the soldier to his right a flat look. “The knife in his pocket, as well.”

_Damn._

Sokka grit his teeth as he took his knife and slid it into his own pocket. He looked nervous while he did it. Considering Zuko’s sparkling personality, Sokka guessed the princess probably wasn’t one to forgive sloppy mistakes, either.

All the soldiers looked the same behind the mask of the helmet. Sokka glared at him, anyway, tried to memorize his height, the lump of it in his pocket, the scuff on his boot—he was _tired_ of firebenders taking his stuff. 

The man shook him roughly to break his staring, then forced him to walk the last few steps toward the bridge. The princess stepped up beside him. For a moment she laid a hand on his arm, feather light, like she was about to lead him into a ballroom, not drag him handcuffed back to his captors. Something in the touch, in the look on her carefully-blank face, made his stomach sour. 

Her fingernails dug into his bicep. Sokka winced as she tugged him close enough to see the little flecks of brown in her too-wide eyes. There was something wild in the look on her face, like she was daring him to try something—like she was excited by the possibility.

“I am not my brother,” she said, very calmly. “If you try to run from me, you _will not_ get away unharmed.”

Sokka could hear Zuko shouting long before they made it back to the resort, even over the roar of the falls. The princess rolled her eyes at the sound.

The courtyard was nearly deserted now. Whether the other guests had made themselves scarce thanks to Zuko’s shouting, or whether the fading afternoon light had chased them indoors for the evening, Sokka didn’t know. 

Zuko was standing in the center of the courtyard, too preoccupied with screaming at his uncle to notice their approach. Iroh looked only mildly chastised, but he was nodding with the same serene patience he always wore when Zuko was angry at him—which was most of the time, it seemed.

The rest of the staff looked nervous, torn between watching the exchange and pretending they didn’t notice the prince of the Fire Nation shattering the tranquility of their resort courtyard. The desk clerk was nowhere in sight. Sokka hoped that she’d made herself scarce as soon as Zuko noticed he was missing.

“How could you let him escape!” Zuko shouted. “Where did he even _get_ a—?”

Iroh’s gaze flicked over to the bridge. The chagrined smile slipped off his face. He _tensed_ , which was—a very weird reaction to seeing your niece. Sokka’s stomach flipped, worried suddenly that he was missing something. 

Zuko cut off abruptly when he saw his uncle’s expression shift. He whirled around on his heel. At first his gaze landed on Sokka, and he almost looked relieved. But then his eyes slid behind him, and his face twitched, trying on several emotions, too fast to identify them.

Unsurprisingly, he settled on anger.

“Hello, Brother. Uncle,” the princess said sweetly, her smile on the wrong side of too sharp.

“Azula,” Zuko said. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Azula rolled her eyes, the only indication she’d heard him. She eyed the courtyard, the baths, and the resort entrance with distaste, then turned the same look back on Zuko. 

“Really, Zuzu,” Azula said, in a tone like she was chiding a small child. “You need to keep better track of your things.”

Zuko grit his teeth. “Hand him over. He’s _my_ prisoner,” he said. 

“That’s funny, because as I recall, I was the one who captured him on the way in,” she said. She tapped her nail against her bottom lip, thoughtful. “But I’ll tell you what… you can escort _my_ new prisoner to my ship, if you’d like. We’re on the same side, after all.”

Sokka’s heart sank through his stomach. If he ended up on a Fire Nation warship, in the cells like a prisoner… he’d never get out. Shit. If they threw him into the brig of the Fire Princess’s personal ship, did that mean they would take him back to the Fire Nation? Or would they drag him through Earth Kingdom waters, where he’d be stuck listening to the distant sounds of them attacking his own ally’s ships, even Sokka’s _own people’s_ ships, and with nothing to do but rot and wait for the ocean spirit to try its luck again—

Zuko stomped over and grabbed him roughly by the bicep. He dragged Sokka toward him. The soldier let go hesitantly, torn between following Azula’s orders or Zuko’s. 

“Will you quit yanking me around?” Sokka said. Of course, Zuko ignored him, dragging him back away from his sister and the other soldiers. For a second Zuko looked like he wanted to throttle him, and then his expression got all pinched as he leaned in closer. 

“You shouldn’t have let her see you,” Zuko hissed. 

Sokka rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t really part of my plan,” he said. 

Zuko just scowled at him, and the reminder that Sokka had nearly escaped on his watch—well, his uncle’s watch. 

“Just be quiet if you know what’s good for you,” he whispered. He seemed tense now, even more so than when he’d been screaming at Iroh for letting Sokka go.

Was he mad that his sister was here? Zuko didn’t seem like the sort of person who knew how to share, so maybe he was just upset he didn’t get to keep all the evil Avatar-capturing glory for himself. Sokka didn’t really care either way. 

“You’re not taking him. I need him,” Zuko said.

Azula’s expression lit up in understanding, and Zuko’s soured. 

“For your little Avatar hunt?” she asked. She glanced at Sokka. “Friend of yours, is he?”

Don’t even think about—” Zuko started to say, but Azula cut him off with a flippant wave of her hand.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Not anymore,” Azula said, examining her nails with complete disinterest, like she was just _baiting_ Zuko to ask:

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She glanced up at him, and for some reason when she smiled sweetly, Zuko bristled like a catigator. 

Spirits, what kind of family was this? 

“Father regrets your banishment,” she said. “He wants you to come home.”

_Banishment?_

Sokka turned to stare at Zuko, but it was almost like he’d forgotten Sokka was there. Banishment was—that was _serious_ , where Sokka was from. Sokka couldn’t think of anything he could do that would get him banished from his tribe, and that meant...

Zuko must have done something horrible. He was the prince, so whatever he’d done was bad enough that his own _father_ had banished him. Was that why he was after Aang? He thought he could buy his way back home with the Avatar?

Iroh had said that Zuko wouldn’t give up without a good reason. Sokka guessed he understood why, now.

Zuko’s hand went slack against Sokka’s arm, not even holding him there anymore, only barely touching him. Sokka could yank his arm away and make a run for it right now, if he wasn’t so badly outnumbered. He eyed the waterfall anyway, for a half-second, but... it was too much of a risk, even without the chains. 

The princess was staring at him, when Sokka looked back. She smirked, just for a moment, before she turned to her brother with a sympathetic pout. 

“Father… regrets?” Zuko asked.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Azula said. “Father needs people at his side who he can _trust_ , if we’re going to bring this war to an end. Who better than his own family?” 

Sokka glanced over at him, but Zuko seemed frozen. 

“Shouldn’t you be happy?” she demanded. “I came all this way—”

“I’m sure your brother only needs a moment,” Iroh said.

“Be quiet, Uncle,” Azula said. 

“I…” Zuko said, surprise and disbelief both plain on his face. His hand tightened on Sokka’s arm again, like he’d suddenly remembered he was a flight risk. He flicked a quick glance in Sokka’s direction. 

Zuko frowned slightly, and hesitated. 

“What about the Avatar?” he asked eventually. 

“Well, obviously Father isn’t going to just _give up_. You’re the one who’s been hunting him for the past three years, shouldn’t you know where to find him? Don’t tell me you lost track of him at the North Pole.”

“We’re tracking him now,” Zuko insisted, even though they’d only just washed up on the shore like driftwood that morning, and they absolutely were not doing that. 

“You lost him,” Azula said. “And you almost lost his little friend, too.” She considered Sokka for a short moment. “You were going to trade him for the Avatar?”

Zuko only glared at her, but she didn’t seem to expect an answer. 

She shrugged. “Well, if that’s the best you can do, then fine. We’ll bring him along.” 

Nope, Sokka didn’t like that idea at all. That waterfall was looking more and more tempting. At least the waterfall didn’t have an evil Fire Lord on the other side of it. He looked at Zuko and—was surprised to see him hesitating.

“He’s not useful to Father. We’ve already interrogated him to find where the Avatar is going,” Zuko said. “They were separated. He doesn’t know—”

“Oh, don’t sell yourself so short, Zuko,” she said. “You’ve finally had an actually good idea, let’s not waste it. As soon as the Avatar learns we have him, he’ll come straight to us.”

Zuko looked hesitant. “I don’t…”

“Take him to the ship,” Azula said, shooing the soldiers over with a casual flip of her wrist. Sokka’s heart caught in his throat. He glanced back and found Zuko already staring at him with an unreadable expression, just the hint of a frown on his lips. 

Probably reluctant to hand him over. Sokka glared when he caught his gaze, and Zuko narrowed his eyes and turned away.

“You should be grateful I’m even here. I’m not a messenger,” Azula said. “I’m not a warden, either, but apparently you can’t do _anything_ on your own.”

One of the soldiers shifted behind her just slightly. Sokka cut a glance at him, but it was hard to tell what he was thinking behind the helmet. Something itched at the back of his mind, anyway.

“If you’re not a messenger, why _did_ the Fire Lord send you?” Sokka asked. 

Azula turned to look at him like she couldn’t believe that he’d spoken. The indignation slid off her face quickly, replaced by more of that same placid meanness. When she spoke again, it was to Zuko, as though he’d been the one to ask. “I suppose I was feeling magnanimous,” she said. “It’s been _such_ a long time, after all.”

Ha. Because they seemed like such the family reunion types. 

Sokka really doubted any sort of sibling loyalty had motivated her, with the way they were needling each other, but why would they send the princess, of all people, personally? Azula had said herself that she wasn’t a messenger. So why?

The entire retinue seemed wildly unprepared to greet them, considering that Zuko and Iroh were Fire Nation royalty. They hadn’t even brought a healer with them, even though they’d spent the last several weeks adrift on the frigid northern sea, fleeing the failed invasion with thousands of their countrymen left rolling beneath the ocean. 

They hadn’t brought _anything_ for them. Anything except half a dozen soldiers in battle armor, armed firebenders, carrying shackles—

“Oh,” Sokka said. “You’re not here to bring them home.” 

The words left his mouth almost before he realized they must be true. It made sense though. The Siege of the North had failed, the Fire Navy had been decimated… It was an embarrassment, and according to Zuko, the admiral who’d lead the invasion was dead. Who better to blame, than an apparently banished prince? 

“You’re here to arrest them,” Sokka said. Azula didn’t even twitch, but the soldiers behind her did, exchanging nervous glances. “You are!”

Zuko turned bright red. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouted at Sokka. There was a little flash of fire between his teeth, blink and you miss it. Except, _not a single soldier_ wasn’t watching him with single-minded focus, just _waiting_ for an attack. More than one hand twitched into fists. 

Azula’s eyes narrowed, and a flicker of irritation passed over her face, directed at the guards. They snapped back to attention a moment too late. Sokka could see the tension rising in Iroh’s shoulders, despite the careful calm on his face.

Even Zuko caught the motion, and hesitated. A complicated look flickered over his face, so quickly that Sokka nearly missed it. It wasn’t anger, or betrayal, like Sokka would have felt. He almost looked—

Zuko clenched his teeth, and took a half-step toward his sister. 

“You lied to me!” Zuko shouted. 

“Like I’ve never done that before,” Azula said. She rolled her eyes, and then cut a glance over to the guards flanking Sokka. “Take that one to the ship. We’re leaving.”

“Zuko, wait!” Sokka shouted. 

Zuko ignored him. He flicked his wrists, red-hot flames leaping from his palms as he lunged forward. The soldiers flinched, rocking back into fighting stances, and Iroh moved before they could even attack. 

“Prince Zuko!” Iroh said. At the same time Sokka shouted, 

“You idiot, she’s baiting you!”

One of the soldiers grabbed Sokka’s arm, distracting him from Zuko and Azula dueling in the courtyard. 

“Let go of me,” Sokka said. He thrashed in his grip, but the man’s hand was like iron on his arm. When Sokka tried to kick at his leg, his stupid sandaled foot just clanged off the Fire Nation armor. He was _not_ getting thrown in a Fire Nation prison because of Zuko’s stupid, impulsive need to _fight_ with everyone. 

A second soldier came up beside them, trying to grab for Sokka’s other arm. 

...The second soldier had a scuffed boot. Sokka elbowed left, shook himself loose, and dove for the man’s pocket. He yanked the shucking knife free before either of them could react, and then thrust down with all his strength into the meat of his thigh.

The man howled in pain. He stumbled, nearly dragged Sokka down with him, hand flexed painfully tight around Sokka’s arm. Sokka shoved him off and staggered away before the other soldier could grab for him.

The man’s hand was wrapped around the hilt of the knife. Sokka had to let it go, stumbling back before he could get a grip on the chains around his wrist.

“You little _shit_ ,” he said. Sokka sprinted for the edge of the courtyard. Iroh was standing near the edge of the pond, and Sokka saw him dodge one of the soldier’s strikes, grab his wrist, and dump him into the water. 

Okay. Okay, options...

Same as before, really. Jump over the side, and take his chance with the falls, or try for the bridge. Except the bridge was _behind_ him, and so was the very angry firebender—

Zuko was too distracted with his stupid sister to pay attention to Sokka. Iroh was too distracted with his stupid nephew to care about Sokka, either, but, maybe—

Iroh had been kind to him. He hadn’t _helped_ him, but—he’d forgotten a knife. That had been careless, for the so-called Dragon of the West. Or maybe it _hadn’t_ been careless. Maybe he’d—

Something collided with Sokka’s back.

He hit the ground, hard, too tired to keep his feet, too clumsy to catch himself with hands bound. Sokka rolled over, and kneed the man in the side with all his weight. He grunted, but didn’t give, grabbing for the chain between Sokka’s wrists. 

His hand twisted toward him, palm flat, fingers curled. 

Sokka screamed, and flinched back from the fire. His vision narrowed to a single point, white at the edges, then black—

There was a flash of heat, and the pressure lifted. Sokka gasped, clutching the fabric of his robe above the burn. 

He breathed harshly through his nose. It _hurt_ , the touch had hurt but the open air now was worse, moving was _so much worse_. He blinked, but the soldier was lying on the ground beside him now. He hadn’t seen—

He shook his head, gasped and scooted backwards, away from the soldier, away from the rest of the fight. 

Ugh, spirits. Even that motion was enough to make his head swim. No one was paying him any mind on the ground, but that wouldn’t last long. Zuko was still trading strikes with his sister, swinging blades of fire like they were dancing. It looked like sparring. 

She was _toying_ with him. 

She was toying with him… until she wasn’t. Azula sidestepped one of Zuko’s attacks, took another dancing step backwards, with too much grace to be anything but a tactical retreat. And then she pointed her fingers, the tiniest smirk touching her lips. 

Azula’s fingers crackled with a blue light, sparks flickering along her fingertips.

_What was that?_

Iroh crushed her hand in his own, and pointed his arm away from them both. Lightning arced off his fingers, flashing as it shot across the courtyard. It struck the baths. 

The water shrieked, instantly boiling, and erupted into a cloud of steam. 

Sokka flinched as the heat washed over him. He shielded his face in the crook of his elbow, and when he turned his head back up the whole courtyard was bathed in a white fog, too thick to see more than a few steps in front of him. He could still hear the soldiers shouting to each other, loud enough that Sokka could guess where they were hidden. He wrapped the chain around his wrist a few times, muffling their clinking with his palm. 

He couldn’t see anything, but neither could any of the soldiers. It was just like their fight with those pirates, only there was no lucky sword from the heavens, and he couldn’t cut through chains anyway. Sokka had lost track of Zuko and Iroh fog, but—

They were going to run. 

The realization settled with heavy dread. That’s what _Sokka_ would have done. They were going to run, and they were going to leave him behind, and he’d be stuck with Azula, not just tied up in the back room of some inn, but actually in a Fire Nation prison cell—

How was he supposed to find Aang and Katara, locked up in the brig of a Fire Nation ship? 

Sokka choked on a gasp as he tried to sit up. The heat in the air alone made the burn sting, the phantom agony of the hand on his side. 

“Ah—hng,” Sokka grit his teeth and forced himself to get up. He needed to get up, move, cross the bridge, reach the trees before the Fire Nation soldiers recovered or a stiff breeze came along and blew his cover away. He couldn’t fight them. Even Zuko and Iroh couldn’t fight them, apparently, because they were running now and they were leaving him behind. 

“Fuck,” he whispered. He was a little dizzy. It was fine. He could do this. The bridge was the other way. He could skirt around the courtyard in the fog and dodge the soldiers. 

Someone grabbed him. Sokka flinched and jerked his arm back. He didn’t have his knife anymore. He could… he could—

“Stop,” Zuko said. “It’s me.”

“Zuko?” Sokka said. 

Zuko just grit his teeth and grabbed him by the bicep. His fingertips were almost painfully warm against Sokka’s skin, residual heat from trading fire with his sister. He dragged Sokka forward roughly, and Sokka stumbled trying to get his feet under him.

“Prince Zuko!” Iroh’s voice carried through the steam. 

Zuko tugged Sokka toward the sound, and Sokka immediately stumbled. His legs weren’t cooperating. The pain in his side was pulsing with his heartbeat, and it was so distracting. He could hardly catch his breath, he’d… he’d lost a shoe, too, because of _fucking course he’d lost a shoe_.

“Zuko, wait, I can’t,” Sokka gasped.

“You have to,” Zuko snapped, but he still slowed slightly, still slid his arm under Sokka’s to take more of his weight. He could see shadows moving through the steam, flashes of light from stray firebolts. Was that Iroh fighting more of them, or Azula searching for them? He couldn’t tell. Sweat prickled at his neck, but his legs felt steadier once they were moving. 

Their feet struck hollow ground as they reached the bridge, and then the sound of the falls rushed in past the muffling walls of the resort. 

“Where’s…?” 

“Uncle,” Zuko said, as a hand fell on his shoulder. 

They cleared the steam half-way over the bridge, rounded the bend, and…

No one followed. No one followed, so they ran, down off the path, down the sharp incline into the fire-red foliage. They didn’t follow it directly, but he could hear the Su Oku River rushing to their left. Zuko and Iroh were unfairly fast, his lungs were burning, and Sokka had _one shoe_. 

His heart was hammering so loud in his ears that he could hardly hear the sound of their footfalls on the forest floor. He was limping awkwardly, gait uneven with only one sandal. The trees began to thin, the steep bank of the river shrinking, the waters calming, the sky darkening. Sokka turned his head down to scrub his forehead against the sleeve of his robe and caught sight of the road through the thinning trees. It didn’t look like a merchant road—not wide enough for a cart, certainly, maybe a footpath, and the area was dark with the deciduous canopy. There was a bamboo forest on the other side, bright green and evenly spaced, clearly cultivated. He could see the light of the first scattered stars peeking between the bamboo leaves at the very tops of the stalks.

Sokka collapsed the moment they stopped. His legs burned from running, his knees hurt from landing on them. He clenched his teeth, because his burn was _screaming_ at him, every movement rasping against the fabric of his robe. Even breathing was agony, pulling on burned skin. He could barely catch his breath, gasping shallowly, trying to hold still. 

Sokka didn’t even want to look. The burn felt like fire all along his side. 

“Get up,” Zuko snapped. He was as winded as Sokka.

“Just… give me a second,” Sokka said. 

Zuko looked… furious? No, that wasn’t quite right, but in the steadily darkening woods, dizzy and exhausted, his eyes had to be playing tricks on him, because for one wild moment Sokka thought he looked scared.

“Nephew, enough,” Iroh said. “I think we’re safe here.”

Zuko acted like he hadn’t even heard his uncle. He grabbed the chain between Sokka’s wrists. He winced when Zuko yanked him forward. 

He didn’t pull him to his feet. He just dragged the manacles over hard stone and raised his heel. He brought it down, hard, on the seam where the metal clasped together. Heat flashed against Sokka’s skin, for just a moment, but before the burning could build to pain the manacles shattered. 

Zuko kicked the broken manacles aside like they’d personally offended him. Like he needed something to take his anger out on. The cuffs left a shiny pink line along his skin, where the heated metal had pressed on his wrists for the instant before they broke. It stung faintly, but he could barely feel it over the much more insistent pain from his side.

Zuko stopped and stared at him. With nothing but the too-still silence of the forest, the whisper of the evening breeze in the grass, and the distant murmur of the river, the tension was a strange mockery of peace. His expression was hard to read, but not from the darkness. He was holding himself carefully still, breathing slightly too shallow, like a wind-up toy slowly grinding to a halt. His chin twitched down, almost a nod, mostly to himself. His voice was low when he spoke.

“Get out of here,” Zuko said. 

Sokka stared at him.

“What?” Sokka asked. His pulse was thumping in his ears. He must have misheard him. 

“Before I change my mind,” Zuko said.

“You’re... letting me go?” Sokka asked. His head was buzzing with the fear and anxiety from running, from being dragged around, and now… now confusion, too, because Zuko was letting him go, and that didn’t make _sense_. A curl of suspicion hooked under his ribs, and Sokka latched onto it. 

(A curl of hope, too, and Sokka squashed that feeling down.)

“Why?” Sokka asked.

Zuko clenched his jaw. “What do you mean, why? Just go!”

“I mean, why would you help me if you were just going to let me go?” Sokka demanded. “Why didn’t you leave me behind?”

He shouldn’t be arguing. He should be _running_. Just… it didn’t make sense. Zuko didn’t need to go back for Sokka, unless he was still trying to catch Aang. Why would he let him _go_?

Zuko yanked his bag open. He pulled out Sokka’s wallet and his knife—the one he’d taken off of him, before they’d made landfall—and threw them both down into the dirt with so much force that the blade stuck. He turned without another word and stalked into the trees. Iroh hesitated only a moment, before following Zuko out of sight.

Sokka waited until Zuko had stomped away to pull the knife out of the ground. He picked his wallet up carefully, turned the little pouch over in his hands. It still had some money in it—coppers, mostly, a few spare silver. The last time he’d used it had been buying supplies on their way to the North Pole. The money was… good, and helpful. He’d need it if he was going to find his way across the Earth Kingdom. He’d need a lot more, realistically, but it was a start. The pouch…

The pouch was Southern Water Tribe made, blue dyed tiger seal hide, with a carefully embroidered patch on the side, where Gran Gran had stitched it up years ago when the seam split. She’d slipped it to him when they were leaving to follow Aang. Sokka rubbed his thumb across the stitching, gently. 

He’d thought he’d lost it along with all his other things, his boomerang and his boots and the clothes he’d left behind. But Zuko had taken it, and held onto it, and... well, he’d given it back to him. So. 

Sokka cleared his throat and stuffed the wallet into his pocket. The spa robes were thin, and the pockets weren’t very deep. He patted the awkward lump of it and blinked and blinked. 

The knife, at least, had the sheath, and that made it a little easier to carry. He was still tense, still thrumming with adrenaline. He was coming down from it now, less energized, more twitchy and tired. He stared at the forest.

Now what?

Now he… should leave. On his own. Maybe make his way to Omashu, or try to. 

Now he should find Aang and Katara, or try to. 

Now…

Without really thinking about it, Sokka found himself turning his back on the way they’d come from. Sokka could hear running water in the direction Zuko and Iroh had gone.

All Sokka had was a knife and one sandal. He kicked the sandal off, barefoot now, and left it where it landed. He’d traveled across the world to get this far, but that had been on Appa, with Aang and Katara. They’d been _together_ , the whole time they’d been together, and... 

(Hah. Sokka had never been alone in his life.)

Sokka had no way to get to Omashu. Sokka hardly had more than a handful of coppers, and the Earth Kingdom was _huge_. It would take him weeks to cross it alone, and knowing Aang, it would take him days for the winds to change directions and carry him away again. 

He’d managed to catch his breath, kneeling there in the grass. Sokka’s legs still wobbled when he forced himself to stand.

It just made sense to follow them. Sokka could never find them on his own before Aang and Katara moved on, so he’d just have to find them wherever they went next, a free-spirited little needle in the hay-clover stack that was the Earth Kingdom mainland. 

But Zuko had found Aang plenty of times throughout their journey to the North Pole. He was scarily good at it, and there was just… no way he was just giving up now, even if that was what he wanted Sokka to believe. Azula had said that Zuko was banished, and Sokka didn’t know what that meant, or why, but Sokka had _seen_ the way Zuko had chased them. Even Iroh had said that Zuko wouldn’t give up.

Zuko would find Aang long before Sokka ever managed to, and Sokka was going to be there when it happened.

Zuko slid the knife beneath the leather tie around his ponytail. He barely hesitated, just sliced the whole ponytail off in one cut. Sokka watched as he passed the blade to Iroh. Zuko looked… well, that couldn’t be right, because he almost looked… sad? Sokka was pretty sure he’d never seen Zuko show any emotion that wasn’t angry, or frustrated, or jerk-ish, or…

Well, he had, though, hadn’t he? For just a moment, after he’d realized his sister had betrayed him, and he wasn’t going home. Sokka knew what grief looked like, and he knew what it looked like to try and mask it. It was impossible not to know, growing up how they did. The Fire Nation made sure of that.

So, Sokka knew grief. Katara, angry, clutching mom’s necklace so tight her fingers turned white. His dad, so serious one moment, laughing the next. Bato, quiet—he’d always been quiet, but that quiet felt different. Even more so in the way the silences hung, the way dad tried to fill them...

He’d seen grief in more forms than he’d ever hoped too, and he knew what he saw. 

Zuko was mourning his position, maybe. The luxuries of a prince.

(Even without saying it out loud, those excuses tasted bitter on his tongue. It was a home he was mourning, same as Dad when their mom died, Sokka when their dad left...)

Anyway. The haircut looked significant, was all. It looked final.

(It also looked like they were stopping for a _haircut_ with the princess of the Fire Nation hot on their tails, ready to arrest them or worse).

The knife left a weird little diamond-shaped patch on the back of Zuko’s head. Sokka stared at it for a moment. He stared at Zuko, too, silently watching his hair float away on the current.

Sokka cleared his throat. “You look stupid,” he said. 

Zuko flinched, badly, before he seemed to register Sokka’s words. He froze when he saw him, confused. Iroh hardly reacted, like he’d known Sokka was watching them all along. 

“I told you to leave,” Zuko said. 

Sokka ignored him. 

“Are you still looking for Aang?” Sokka asked.

Zuko’s hands fell to his lap. 

“What?” Zuko asked. 

“Are you still looking for—”

“I _heard you_ ,” Zuko said. “And I told you to go away.”

The gravel on the riverbank crunched under Sokka’s knees. Zuko was half-turned, staring at him, looking torn between anger or confusion or something else entirely, too hard to read in the dark shadows of the tree cover.

Sokka’s fingertips were bloody. He stared at them for a moment, unsure where it had come from. The man he’d stabbed, maybe—

Hah. Oh, spirits, he’d _stabbed_ someone. 

His fingers had left little rusty prints on his robe, above the blackened scorch marks on the fabric. His hands shook as he scrubbed the blood off. They shook worse when he dunked his arms above the wrist. The burns on his wrist weren’t bad—just faint little marks where the metal had touched him. The redness faded after a few seconds under the cool water. Zuko had pretty impressive control, actually, to do that.

The burn on his side, though… he didn’t even want to look.

(He wished Katara was here.)

The cool water felt nice on his wrists, against the overwarm flush of his neck. Zuko watched him, annoyed, as he scrubbed his hands, like he was offended by the mundanity of it. Sokka shook the water from his fingers and then wiped them on his knees. 

“I’ll fix your stupid hair for you,” Sokka said. 

“I’m not letting you anywhere near my face with a knife,” Zuko said mildly. He didn’t even sound all that angry, really. Maybe because he was tired, or… or maybe he was just taking pity on Sokka. _He_ sure felt tired.

“I do my own, don’t I?” Sokka said. He scrubbed his fingers along the stubble of his shaved sides. Zuko had seen him cutting it on the raft. Sokka knew what he was doing. 

“Maybe I don’t trust you,” Zuko said. 

Sokka, kindly, ignored the easy barb. If either of them was the untrustworthy one… well. He pulled the knife from his holster. It made Zuko tense, even though all Sokka did was wave it jauntily between them, blade glinting dully in the moonlight.

“I’ll fix your stupid hair,” Sokka repeated. “So let me come with you.”

Zuko looked momentarily baffled. It passed quickly, and his expression shuttered. 

“No,” Zuko said. 

The forest was quiet—oppressive, almost, with that predatory stillness that came from something hunting. They’d distracted Azula with the steam from the baths, taken advantage of that little window for a quick escape. Sokka doubted it would last for long. 

“I’m looking for my sister,” Sokka said. “Your sister is looking for _you_.”

He also very strongly suspected that she’d be looking for him now, too, which was just… great. Zuko grimaced at the mention of his sister. He nodded, slightly, eyes narrowed. 

They should move. They should leave the colony territory altogether, flee deeper into the Earth Kingdom until the occupied towns were far behind them, find somewhere where the Fire Nation didn’t already have their foot in the door. It was getting steadily darker, now, as the night set in. That would work in their favor, but only for so long, only until they managed to put together a proper search party. Sokka didn’t know her, but from the way that Zuko and Iroh had reacted to seeing Azula, he really, really didn’t want to wait around to find out what she would do next.

“Where else am I supposed to go, Zuko?” Sokka asked. 

Zuko blinked at him, eyes widening slightly. The expression didn’t last for long, hidden quickly behind another annoyed glare. 

He clenched his jaw, hands balled into fists against his knees.

“Do what you want,” Zuko said. 

Zuko shoved himself to his feet and stalked away from the river bed. Sokka followed, more slowly, his hand pressed against his side. It didn’t really help. He felt warm, though maybe that was just from running. He was sweating from the exertion, though, and the salt stung his side. Even just bending his torso enough to shift off his knees felt like getting stabbed with a hot poker. He breathed harshly through his nose, teeth clenched, but he still managed to find his feet. 

“Are you injured?” Iroh asked. 

“I’m fine,” Sokka said immediately. He was still holding the knife, but he was very aware of how little use that would be, if Zuko changed his mind. And he’d said he would change his mind. 

(Sokka had done a lot of stupid things, lately. His luck had held out so far.)

Even if Zuko _did_ change his mind, he’d take him to find Aang and Katara, which still left him better off than he was now, lost in the Earth Kingdom, no map, no supplies, and no idea where to start looking. 

“Perhaps our first step should be to find a healer,” Iroh said. “May I look?”

“No, Uncle,” Zuko said. He was looking more and more annoyed, a bit like a tea kettle about to boil over, as Iroh completely ignored the protest, and gestured for Sokka to sit down on one of the rocks by the bank. “Azula will be right behind us. We can’t waste time with this.”

Zuko was right. Azula probably _was_ right behind them. It felt risky to stop. They’d probably been here for too long already, all that time wasted for a stupid haircut, and Sokka really didn’t want to be the one to hold them up any longer. 

“He’s right,” Sokka said. “I’m fine.”

“Just a quick look won’t hurt,” Iroh said, obviously trying to appease his nephew as much as Sokka. He clenched his teeth, and reluctantly moved his hand away.

“Please, ah—don’t touch it,” Sokka said quietly. 

Iroh hummed a quiet acknowledgment. He nudged Sokka’s hand aside and pulled back the burnt fabric. The robe stuck a bit at the edge, and Sokka clenched his jaw so tightly he could hear his teeth creaking.

 _Spirits_ , that hurt. 

Iroh murmured a quiet apology, and lit a small flame in one hand. Sokka was almost relieved when he saw it. The burn wasn’t nearly as big as it felt when he was running. _It hurt_ , it felt _enormous_ , so he’d expected so much worse, with the pain radiating out over his stomach and back. The burn was only the size of the man’s hand, where the soldier had tried to grab him. It was a little ragged on the edges, already blistering. The cool air stung his side, heat and pain radiating out from where the fabric had pulled tender skin.

Zuko had stopped complaining. Sokka glanced up at both of them, and the little relief he’d felt seeing the size of the burn drained out of him at their expressions.

“What?” Sokka asked. “It’s… it’s not so bad.”

His stomach churned with anxiety. Iroh and Zuko shared matching, grim expressions, and it set Sokka’s mind racing. The wound wasn’t actually that big, right? It felt big, when he was running, but now that he was looking at it… well, it wasn’t great, but it was only hand-sized. That was—was fine, wasn’t it? He’d live.

(What did the firebenders know that he didn’t?)

Sokka looked at Zuko then—his face and his scarred cheek. He looked less angry now, and more uncomfortable, hands clenched into fists at his sides. He was nearly shaking, probably with the effort of biting back his frustration. Sokka could feel the heat rolling off him like a stove. Iroh could too, and reached out to lay a steady hand on his shoulder. If anything, Zuko looked more annoyed at the reminder, but when the next breeze carried the heat away, a slight chill followed.

“It will be much better when we find a healer,” Iroh said, with the same pleasant, placating voice he used whenever his nephew said something particularly stupid. Zuko just frowned at them both, but he didn’t argue. That, more than anything, had Sokka giving the burn another anxious look.

“We need to move,” Zuko said. “Uncle?” 

Iroh patted his knees, and straightened from where he was crouching to look at Sokka’s side. 

“The Su Oku river runs toward the ocean,” Iroh said. “If we follow it upstream, it will take us out of Fire Nation territory. We will be able to find a village and a healer.”

“And supplies,” Zuko said pointedly. “And a map.”


	5. Chapter 5

Why was the Earth Kingdom so _hot_?

They were as far north as they could possibly get while still being on the mainland. The moon had risen, a waxing sliver in the sky, and the night air had a bite to it every time the wind picked up.

He still felt flush, overwarm and sweating from the run and now from stumbling through the trees, and—and Sokka wasn’t stupid, okay, he knew that it wasn’t the weather that was making him so warm, he knew that he was hurt, and it was bad. It had to be, because Iroh kept watching him with thin-lipped worry when he thought Sokka wasn’t looking, and he was tired, shaky, though it was hard to tell if that was the burn or the weeks spent with too little food, adrift at sea. 

Zuko wasn’t helping. Zuko was _hovering_ , like he didn’t trust him to handle himself. Sokka had stumbled on a tree root a few miles back, and Zuko had caught his elbow and just not let go. He was radiating heat like a campfire. Sokka wasn’t even sure he was aware he was doing it, just breathing steady, tight breaths and glaring every time his uncle glanced over with concern. 

“I can walk on my own,” Sokka said. His skin was clammy under Zuko’s hand—that had to be unpleasant, but he was acting like he didn’t notice, even though the heat was all Sokka could think about. Zuko met his gaze in the darkness. He was silent for a long moment, but his grip stayed firm on Sokka’s arm even as his eyes slid away.

“I know you can,” Zuko said softly.

They’d followed the footpath along the Su Oku river until it merged with a wider road—the trade road, probably, that led down to the same Fire Nation occupied town that the resort did business with. They abandoned it for the forest, still following the river bank but now over untrodden ground. Walking was even more difficult here, without the path. His feet stung with little cuts and scrapes. His chest hurt, too, but it was hard to tell whether that was the pain from the burn creeping up under his ribs, or his gasping breaths stinging his lungs. 

He wished they could slow down, maybe, just a little. He was _not_ going to ask, because he was slowing them down enough as it was.

“I’m all right,” Sokka said, after a long time had passed with nothing but the shuffle of their feet in the underbrush, and Sokka’s too-loud breathing in his ears. He’d been sicker than this before. What did it matter that last time, he’d gotten to lie down and rest, wrapped in his own bedroll? What did it matter that last time, he’d had his sister...

“You said that already,” Zuko said. He didn’t even sound frustrated, which might be worse than the yelling, and the general bad attitude that Sokka had gotten so used to. 

“Well, I _am_ ,” Sokka said. It felt important that he knew that. Zuko just nodded.

They walked through the night. It took every scrap of his focus to keep his feet—one foot in front of the other, counting his steps, tracking the filtered moonlight as the hours wore on. Zuko seemed restless by the blue hours of dawn, glancing over his shoulder too often, grip too tight on Sokka’s arm. The forest had seemed oppressive, before, still and silent, but now in the full light it felt much too exposed. Iroh stopped and squinted at the canopy, and the buttery morning light spotting through the trees.

“I think we should find somewhere to rest,” Iroh said. “Traveling during the daytime seems unwise.”

He didn’t wait for Zuko to agree, just began to steer them deeper into the trees. Zuko looked like he wanted to argue, but he followed along anyway. He _must_ have been worrying about being spotted in the daylight, just as much as his uncle was. 

“Just until nightfall,” he said tightly, once they’d found a suitable spot to stop. “We can’t risk staying in one place for too long.” 

He was talking to his uncle, but his eyes were on Sokka as he said it, and he still hadn’t let go of his arm. 

“M’okay,” Sokka said. 

“And how are _you_ , nephew?” Iroh asked, voice surprisingly gentle. That seemed to startle Zuko, but it didn’t last long before his expression was shuttering into another glare. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Zuko snapped. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

His hand tightened on Sokka’s arm, just shy of painfully. 

“Nephew,” Iroh said. He touched Zuko’s wrist, and Zuko snatched his hand back from both of them with a sharp inhale. He crossed his arms tightly in front of himself instead, as Sokka swayed a little at the loss of support.

Sokka sat down right there in the grass, trying to catch his breath. He folded his arms over his knees and pressed his forehead into the crease of his elbow. Iroh was staring at Zuko with a concern Sokka felt like he ought to understand, but he was just so exhausted from running. He could barely keep his eyes open, let alone puzzle over Zuko’s moods. 

It was such a relief, just to sit and tip his head down, even if the ground was cold and he felt sweaty and chilled at the same time. He blinked and time slid treacherously forward—they’d moved while he wasn’t looking. Zuko stomped around, digging through his bag, and Iroh had turned to… pulling up plants by the roots… and shaking them? Shaking them with _purpose_ , scattering dirt all over the ground and Zuko’s shoes. Sokka laughed, too tired to bother stifling it, when he caught sight of Zuko’s murderous face.

“Uncle, what are you doing?” Zuko asked. 

“The root of this plant can be shaved and used for tea. Good for pain, and fever—”

“No strange plants,” Zuko said. “You’ll kill him.”

“If it would make you feel better,” Iroh said, “I could try it first.”

“ _No_ , Uncle,” Zuko said more forcefully. “I can’t carry both of you when you poison yourself!”

“I have…” Sokka mumbled, and Zuko and Iroh both turned to look at him, like they hadn’t realized he was listening. He was frustratingly clumsy, fishing around in his pockets, “Apricherries?”

He pulled out a handful, all squished and stuck together now. Sokka peeled them apart into two, uneven lumps, and held them out. Zuko stared at them like he’d never seen anything stranger in his life. 

“If… you’re hungry,” he added helpfully. _Sokka_ wasn’t hungry. Sokka kind of felt like he was going to throw up, “It won’t poison you?”

Wasn’t that what they were talking about? Maybe not, if the baffled look on Zuko’s face was anything to go by. He was kind of having a hard time grasping the thread of the conversation again, but that was fine. He set the lump of fruit in Zuko’s hand. There. 

“He’s getting worse,” Zuko said plainly. That was… rude. Was that rude? Sokka wasn’t… totally sure, anymore. Zuko was holding his fruit with both hands, like he was afraid he’d drop them. It was fine, if he did. Sokka had more. He thought to say as much. He tipped his head down against his knee and closed his eyes, instead.

“Let him sleep, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. “You should as well. I’ll keep watch.”

Someone was shaking his shoulder. He felt like he’d been buried under a stack of furs, like someone had stoked the fire too high. Sokka groaned, and tried to shove the hands away—he was tired, his head was swimming, please just…

Zuko shook him, roughly, and Sokka snapped awake.

Sokka felt like he’d barely closed his eyes, but it was fully dark again, so he must have been sleeping for hours. For a moment Zuko just looked at him. And then… Sokka might not be fully awake yet, because Zuko reached out and touched his forehead, gently, and his cheek, frowning thoughtfully. Sokka blinked at him. Zuko crossed his arms quickly and leaned away.

“Enough sleeping,” he said quietly. “We need to keep going.”

“I’m awake,” Sokka mumbled. Zuko was staring at him with that annoyed, pinched expression, like he’d sucked on a pomelo lemon and blamed Sokka for the taste. 

“Can you walk?” he asked. Sokka huffed. 

“I’m fine,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. 

“...Good. I’m going to talk to Uncle,” Zuko said. “So just… wait here.” 

Sokka wasn’t planning on going anywhere, so he nodded tiredly. He could hear Zuko whispering to his uncle. He was whispering about _Sokka_ , he knew. He wasn’t _stupid_. 

“—ot much farther, I think,” Iroh said. “Can you see the lights—?”

He wondered if Zuko would even notice if he took a quick nap. He’d seemed grumpy, not that that was unusual. Maybe he was just sick of stumbling through the dark with Sokka dragging him down. 

“—see anything through these stupid trees!” Sokka tilted his head to the side, in time to watch Zuko stomp off in the other direction. 

He wasn’t sure how long he dozed, whether it was hours or just moments, but it was still dark when someone touched his arm. Sokka flinched, and then doubled over, hissing through clenched teeth. 

“Easy,” Iroh said, putting a hand under Sokka’s arm. “Time to go.”

Zuko was standing a few feet ahead of them, looking impatient, arms crossed tightly over his chest. Sokka guessed he was supposed to be grateful that they hadn’t agreed to just leave him behind entirely. Sokka clenched his teeth, breathed through his nose, and didn’t complain when Iroh nudged him to rise. 

He could have cried, when they spotted the first rooftop through the trees, and the forest gave way to cleared, cultivated land. Appa would have flown right over here on their way north, or at least, close enough to have seen the town if they’d looked. None of it looked familiar to him now, but still, it was a relief to see—all Earth Kingdom architecture, without a hint of Fire Nation influence.

They hadn’t seen any curious citizens peeking out from behind their curtains, although he wasn’t certain if it was the hour, or whether, this close to Fire Nation occupied territory, it was simply safer to mind their own business and not welcome strangers at their doors. They’d gotten directions from a tired-looking man standing watch by the city gates, who had looked at the three of them like they were rat vipers, gaze following them long after they’d passed him by.

The clinic was two-storied and dotted with windows, but most of the lights had been doused, and the main doors were dark and quiet. Zuko pulled him over to a smaller entrance on the side, where a single lantern was still burning over the doorway, and slammed his fist against the wood. Sokka leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes, listening to the hesitant approach of footsteps and the quiet click of a latch.

The girl who peeked out looked wary at first, and then surprised to see them, even though it couldn’t have been that unusual to call on a healer in the middle of the night. 

“Excuse me. Are you a healer?” Iroh asked.

“I’m sorry, we’re closed,” she said quietly. She turned her back to the darkened clinic and gave Iroh a short bow. “This is just a walk-in clinic. There’s another hospital in the next town over, it’s just a few miles down the… road.”

Just one town over. A few miles. Sokka… Sokka could do a few miles, that was fine. That was fine. That wasn’t far.

Zuko’s hand tightened on his arm as he tried to nod. The girl had been speaking to Iroh, but her face fell when she finally looked at him, eyes flicking over his pain drawn face, his thin robes, down to the blackened scorch marks on his clothes, and the rusty fingerprints from gripping his side. Her hand twitched, a half-aborted attempt to touch before she drew her fist back to her chest.

“What happened?” she asked. 

Zuko exchanged a quick glance with his uncle. They hesitated a moment too long, and the girl shook her head. She turned back and pushed open the door.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Bring him inside.”

Sokka was sweating enough already, but it was even more stuffy inside. The girl—

(Was she a healer? She’d said they were closed. Was this just a random worker? Maybe she was the bookkeeper. Or a janitor. Or—)

The girl led them through a wide, open room with two rows of empty examination tables. Half of the interior walls and most of the doors were made from the same, impractical mulberry shrub paper as back at the resort. She slid the door back into the wall and ushered them inside. 

There were real beds in this room, all of them thankfully empty. She gestured Zuko toward the back one. He dumped Sokka on the edge of the one nearest to the door instead, because he was a stubborn jerk that couldn’t follow instructions. He was pacing a little, across the room and then to the window. Sokka watched him go, almost fascinated by how serious he looked, when _he_ was the one on the bed…

She touched his forehead, and Sokka tore his eyes away. 

“You’re feverish,” she told him. “How long has it been?” 

How long had it been since he’d been burned, or how long had he had a fever? He should know, either way, but he could barely think. Spirits, he was thirsty...

“Over a day,” Iroh said. 

Sokka blinked at him, and at Zuko, the drawn expressions on their faces. Hah. Impatient, probably, to wash their hands of him, now that he was here and hurt and not useful anymore. They were probably going to leave him behind now. They’d already tried once. 

Zuko was frowning at the healer from the other side of the room, as tense as if he was going on trial, which… yeah, okay, he probably didn’t want her finding out he was Fire Nation. 

Sokka could just _tell_ her. Right now. There was nothing stopping him. Maybe Zuko knew it. Maybe that was why he was looking at him like that, all tense and worried. Sokka _wouldn’t_ , though. He wasn’t a jerk. He was—

“My name is Song,” she said, quietly. She tapped his hand, to get his attention. “Can you lean forward for me?” 

“Sorry,” he said, leaning up so he wasn’t sagging back against the wall anymore. She reached under his arms to undo the ties of his robe, quick and clinical. 

The fabric stuck to the edge of the burn. Sokka gripped the side of the bed, white knuckled, teeth clenched tightly as Song dabbed at the fabric with a wet cloth until it unstuck enough to pull away. She folded the shoulder of his robe down for him when his hands were too clumsy to do it himself. 

She touched his forehead again, his cheek, so gently that his eyes prickled with heat. He was just—tired, and a little homesick. He didn’t _want_ to be reminded of Katara right now, but it was hard not to be, with how cold her hands were against his flushed skin. He blinked a few times, trying to get control of himself. He was _fine_. She smiled at him, reassuring, and handed him a cup.

“Drink this,” she said. 

The drink tasted awful, but he was too tired to complain. The air inside the clinic was even worse than outside, uncomfortably warm. Even the light resort robes were already sticking to his skin. How could she even stand this? She touched his neck to get his attention again, which was about when Sokka realized he’d been drifting. 

“I’m going to bandage this,” she said, easing him down onto his back. The sheets were white. He was going to get them dirty. “You can sleep if you want.”

He shouldn’t. They’d only been walking for a few hours, tonight. They’d barely cleared Fire Nation territory, and… and Zuko and Iroh were fine, and awake, and if he slept now they’d leave him behind…

The cot was more comfortable than it had any right being. He’d slept on nothing but the sea spray damp deck of their raft for weeks, in the cold...

“He needs to rest,” she said quietly. 

Just as Sokka thought to protest that he _didn’t_ , the warm flush of the medicine started to dull the searing pain in his side. He gasped, a little, surprised by the sudden relief. She squeezed his hand. Exhaustion washed after that relief in a wave, dragging him down to sleep.

He listened for the sounds of the ocean, gentle waves lapping against the sides of the raft. It was quiet, just some muffled rustling coming from somewhere, and… birds?

Sokka snapped awake, confused, tried to sit up—

His side flared, and he grunted in pain. Ugh, okay, nope. 

Sokka grit his teeth and breathed through it, until the stabbing subsided into a dull burning. He blinked at the ceiling clinic, not the open sky stretching above the sea. 

Right. They’d made landfall, and… 

He sat up again, slowly this time. Sokka’s muscles were clumsy with sleep, or maybe that was a side effect of whatever had been in that drink she’d given him. The other beds lined up along the wall were empty, stiff bedding neatly made. There were shelves pressed unevenly into the corners of the room, stacked high with clutter and clean sheets. An astringent smell hung in the air. He looked around, but there was no sign of anyone else, either. 

He felt strange, not waking on the rolling waves. It was a little disorienting, like the ground was too still, the air too quiet. It was even more quiet than usual, actually, because Zuko was nowhere in sight. Through the half-drawn curtains, Sokka could see the sun marching toward its peak. He must have been asleep for hours—much, much too long. Sokka leaned forward on his elbows, pushing the loose hair back from his face. 

How stupid. They’d have had the whole morning’s head start, maybe even part of the night, if they hadn’t stopped to sleep after ditching him. His chest felt too tight, hard to breathe around. He clenched his hands into fists. How was he going to find them again?

Sokka huffed a short breath, trying to calm his ratcheting heartbeat. His side protested, a little. Not as much as before, at least, and that was maybe the only thing going for him right now. His robe was still folded down at the shoulder. His side was bandaged with thick white gauze, held loosely in place with another bandage wound over his stomach. The little cut on his thumb had been bandaged, too, and the scraped-raw skin on his feet, from running through the forest without shoes. Even his wrists looked better—he wondered, briefly, how they’d explained that one, or whether they’d even stuck around long enough to make excuses. Sokka prodded, gently, at the edge of the bandage over the burn. 

He was tempted to peek, just to see how bad it was. He… probably shouldn’t. The pain had dulled while he slept, between the medicine Song had given him and the dressing. He really, really didn’t want to irritate it again, not when it had dialed back from searing pain to only faintly burning.

Someone knocked politely on the door. 

The sound startled him, which made him jump, which made him wince again. Sokka doubled over for a moment, hissing under his breath. The door slid quietly aside. 

It was Song. She poked her head into the room first, and brightened when she found him awake. She pushed the door open the rest of the way, a fully stacked tray balanced on one arm. The door stuck a little on its track as she slid it closed behind her.

“Good morning,” Song said. The tray’s contents rattled quietly as she set it down. “You’re looking better…?”

“Sokka,” he said, voice raspy with disuse. He grimaced and smacked his tongue.

“Sokka,” she said lightly. “Well, Mushi is making tea, if you’d like some.”

Sokka nodded a bit absently. He didn’t know who that was, but he was so thirsty he’d drink anything she handed to him, really. She smiled and added, “Lee is just outside, if you’d like me to tell him you’re awake.”

That part she added like he ought to know who she was talking about. He scrubbed a hand over his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He felt grimy, and fuzzy in a way that put him off-balance. 

“Uh,” Sokka said. “Who?”

She gave him a puzzled smile. “Oh, um. Junior? Your friend.”

Sokka stared at her for another long moment, confused. It took an embarrassingly long time for his brain to catch up with her words.

Oh. 

Mushi and Junior must be…

They hadn’t left him behind. 

Relief prickled through him, followed immediately by confusion, and suspicion. They hadn’t left him behind. _Why_ hadn’t they left him behind? They’d had every opportunity to, and Zuko had seemed pretty desperate to get rid of him before. 

Maybe Zuko had… changed his mind, and he still wanted to know where Sokka thought Aang might have gone, after all. His fingers curled around the blanket in his lap. The fabric was rough, and not very warm. 

“I guess… you can tell him,” Sokka said. He might as well get it over with. 

“Let’s have a look at you, first,” she said. She brought the tray over to his bedside, bandages and medicine and scissors. He watched warily as she set the materials out. 

Sokka didn’t look as she changed the bandage. It hurt less than it had before, maybe from the cold salve she dabbed over his side, or maybe from the medicine she made him drink right after, as bitter and disgusting as he remembered it.

“It’s easy for a burn this size to get infected,” Song said, tone overly clinical, like she was reciting from a manual. “So keep an eye on it, and keep it clean. I’ll give you a salve and something for the pain to take with you.”

“Thank you,” Sokka said.

“Leave it covered for now,” she added. “I think—your friend can probably help with the bandages, if you need.”

She shifted the tray aside, then set to fixing the new bandage in place. Sokka watched her deft fingers tuck in a stray edge so it couldn’t snag on anything. 

“He’s not my friend,” Sokka said before he could think better of it. He quickly clarified, “We’re just traveling together.”

“He seemed worried about you,” Song said. 

Well. Sokka didn’t really know what to do with that information. 

Zuko had done a lot of confusing things in the last few weeks. Pulling him out of the water, tying him up, getting him caught by his sister, rescuing him from his sister, trying to ditch him in the woods, and now, apparently, fretting over Sokka’s sickbed. 

He wished Zuko would just make up his mind and _pick one_ , because he was starting to get whiplash. 

“That’s… nice of him,” Sokka allowed.

Song’s frown took a little disapproving tilt, which he didn’t think was very fair, since Sokka was _clearly_ not the one in the wrong here. He couldn’t explain that without giving Zuko and Iroh away, though, so now he was just stuck looking like an ungrateful jerk.

He didn’t get a chance to defend himself. The door scraped along its track, and Zuko stalked inside. He froze when he saw Sokka awake. His gaze flicked down to his side and back up again rapidly. Sokka tugged his robe back up. 

Song glanced over her shoulder and offered a smile.

“Sokka and I were just talking about you,” she said lightly, which just made Zuko more tense. Sokka raised an eyebrow at him, and the startled rabbit-deer look on his face. 

“Can you give me and... _Junior_ a minute?” Sokka asked Song. 

Song nodded and offered him a small smile. She squeezed his shoulder lightly, almost reassuring, even though Sokka didn’t know what for. She did the same thing for Zuko on the way out, and Zuko stared at the spot on his shoulder like he’d been poisoned. Sokka waited for the door to slide closed, and then a moment longer, not really sure what to say.

“So,” Sokka said. 

“You shouldn’t have told her your real name,” Zuko said without preamble. He looked stiff, like he didn’t know what he was doing here, and annoyed, like always.

Sokka scoffed. Spirits, he was irritating.

“Why not? _I_ haven’t done anything,” Sokka said. “Last I heard, you two are the only ones who are wanted by the Earth Kingdom.”

“Well, we’re _all_ wanted by the Fire Nation, and Azula knows who you are,” Zuko said. 

“I never told your sister my name,” Sokka said. 

“She knows,” Zuko said, without a shred of doubt, his expression severe enough to send a prickle up Sokka’s spine.

“Well, so what? It’s just a name,” Sokka said.

“She tracked us to that resort the _day_ we made landfall. You don’t think she can find you if you give people your real name?”

Okay, fair point. 

Except that giving people his real name was the only way word might get back to Aang and Katara that he was out here—not that that wasn’t already a long shot, but still. 

If they thought he was dead, then that meant it was all on Sokka to figure out how to get back to them. What if they got lost, without him there to navigate? What if they _needed_ him? They’d left home planning to do the impossible—train the Avatar, fight the Fire Nation, end the war—but that hadn’t felt so daunting, when he’d had Aang and Katara and Suki and Yue. They’d been _together_ , and now...

Now it was like… it was like when he was out on the ice, with the stars above and nothing but wide, open plains in every direction, only he was looking out and it wasn’t _familiar_ and _home_ , it was just _lonely_ and _too much_. It was enough to make a bending master feel small, and Sokka was just… one guy. He didn’t have a sky bison. He didn’t even have _shoes_. How was he supposed to do that alone?

Well, maybe not alone. Zuko leaned against one of the empty beds, arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t glaring anymore, not quite, but he looked supremely uncomfortable, stiff on the edge of the bed like he hadn’t fully decided if he wanted to sit down or run back out the door again. 

“If you’re so worried about your sister finding you, why are you still here?” Sokka asked. 

“Did you _want_ us to leave you behind?” Zuko asked. 

“No,” Sokka said, maybe a little too quickly. He didn’t want to travel the Earth Kingdom alone normally, let alone with Zuko’s crazy sister chasing him. _Maybe_ if they split up she would go after Zuko instead, but Sokka wasn’t going to risk being caught and used as a bargaining chip for Aang. “I just meant... you could have ditched me with the healer last night, guilt-free, but instead you waited.”

“I’m not waiting for you,” Zuko said stiffly. “I’m waiting for my uncle. When he’s ready, we’ll go.” 

Sokka stared at him. “Sure.” 

“He’s tired,” Zuko insisted. 

“Sure,” Sokka said again. Zuko glared at him. It was… more half-hearted, than his usual glare. It was kind of a weird look on Zuko, actually, and a little self-conscious. Sokka was much more used to the spectrum of emotions between _angry_ and _pretentious_ , and this felt like uncertain territory. 

Zuko seemed like he had something else to say, wearing a pinched sort of look and staring resolutely at the door. He clearly wasn’t going to come out with it, though, because he was too stubborn for his own good. 

“What?” Sokka asked. 

“You look...” he said, and then trailed off again. 

“Alive?” Sokka guessed. 

“You weren’t dying,” Zuko snapped. “Don’t be dramatic.”

That startled a sharp laugh from him. Sokka winced a little when the motion jarred his side, but… spirits.

“You are the _last_ person who should be telling me not to be dramatic,” Sokka said. “Ugh, ow. Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’m not _trying_ to,” Zuko shouted.

“Well, obviously,” Sokka said. “Has anyone ever told you to _lighten up_?”

Zuko bristled, but before Sokka could brace himself for more shouting, someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Sokka said, expecting Song, maybe here to yell at Zuko for disturbing her other patients. Instead the door slid aside to reveal Iroh, entirely unphased, as he always was, by his nephew’s shouting. He was carrying a wooden tray, with a small clay teapot and three worn cups. He looked immensely pleased with himself. The sight of him made Zuko sigh, exasperated, but some of the tension that had been building in his shoulders while they talked about his sister seemed to ease.

“Good morning,” Iroh said. He squinted out the window as he set the tray down. “Or perhaps good afternoon, now. You’re looking better.”

“I feel better,” Sokka said, glancing over at Zuko. “Just… tired. And thirsty.”

At that, Iroh smiled. He poured three cups, set one gently on the bedside table near Sokka’s elbow, and then handed a second to Zuko. Zuko took it mechanically, without really even looking at it. 

Sokka wasn’t much of a tea drinker, and definitely not the delicate teas Iroh was probably used to. Maybe once, his village would have had the people to harvest and trade teas like fireweed and cloudberry, but that was before the raids. Anyway, the teas Gran Gran had always made him drink were for medicine, not pleasure, and called up memories of hiding under furs or running to the neighbors’ to avoid having to drink them. If they’d wanted Earth Kingdom blends it would have had to be imported, and in Sokka’s village… yeah, not exactly high on the priority list.

He’d had it in his travels as they crossed the Earth Kingdom, though. This tasted much better than Katara had made it—not that he’d ever tell her that, because she’d probably just get mad, call him ungrateful, and make _him_ cook, and then they’d _all_ suffer... 

Sokka swallowed the rising lump of loneliness before it could take shape, and forced himself to focus on the taste instead of the memory. The tea was earthy with a bit of a bite to it—ginger, probably, because the Earth Kingdom seemed to think that ginger was the cure for everything. Iroh hummed contentedly as he sipped his cup. Zuko mostly just glared at it.

Sokka glanced between the two of them, waiting for one of them to say something. Wasn’t this the part where they started interrogating him again? He was… a little confused, why they were in here, drinking tea of all things, instead of telling him what they _wanted_. 

Zuko had told him to leave that night by the river, and had seemed pretty annoyed when Sokka refused. They’d still helped him though, and found him a healer. Zuko had been practically carrying Sokka by time they’d finally reached the clinic. That ought to have been the end of it. 

But then Zuko and Iroh had _stayed_ , not just to get some sleep for themselves, but well into the morning, when they could have been putting more distance between themselves and the neighboring Fire Nation occupied territory. 

Sokka had been rolling the _why_ over in his mind, and really… the only explanation that made sense was that Zuko still wanted information out of him. Information that Sokka had told him about a dozen times that he didn’t have, that would lead them to Aang. 

(Information that Sokka was pretty sure he _did_ have, if he knew Aang as well as he thought he did.)

But… but even if he didn’t want Zuko to find Aang, _Sokka_ still needed to find him, and he didn’t think he could do it alone. So. 

“I think we should go to Omashu,” Sokka said. 

Iroh frowned and set his cup gently on the table. 

“Omashu is a long way from here,” he said.

This was so stupid. He shouldn’t trust Zuko with this. This was _exactly_ what Zuko had wanted—what he’d been trying to pry out of Sokka for weeks, on the raft and in the resort. 

But they were in Earth Kingdom territory now. Zuko and Iroh were wanted here, and they were wanted by the Fire Nation, too. Even if Sokka told them where Aang was, they didn’t have a crew, they didn’t have a ship… And wasn’t that a strange role reversal? For once, Sokka had the upper hand. All Sokka had to do was tell someone who _Lee and Mushi_ really were, and…

“Aang’s friend lives in Omashu,” Sokka said. “He’s an earthbender, and Aang needs an earthbending teacher. I think… that’s probably where they’re headed next.” 

Zuko looked surprised at first, and then almost annoyed that Sokka was finally admitting that he’d lied to him. 

“And you’re sure he’ll be there?” Zuko asked. 

“Well, no,” Sokka admitted. “I mean, Aang’s twelve. He gets… sidetracked, sometimes, and… what?”

Iroh had a strange expression on his face, uncharacteristically somber. 

“I’m afraid the Avatar won’t be going to Omashu,” Iroh said.

“Why?” Sokka asked, stomach dropping like a stone. It was the way he said it, so certain and yet so carefully gentle, that made his stomach flip—the same voice he’d used on the raft, for Yue. “How could you know that?”

“Because by now Omashu has fallen to the Fire Nation,” he said. “The city was already a target before the Siege of the North began.”

“What? No,” Sokka said. He pushed the blanket down, suddenly too restless to stay in bed. Even if Omashu was a target, it just didn’t make sense, not with King Bumi there. “You don’t know this guy, he’s—he’s a crazy strong bender.”

“One man can certainly make a difference, in the right circumstance. However—”

“There’s no way the Fire Nation could take Omashu,” Sokka interrupted. He nearly shouted it, but Iroh didn’t even seem phased. He only shook his head, at Sokka, and at Zuko who had started to rise from his own seat, scowl firmly in place.

“I have seen the plans for the invasion myself,” Iroh said grimly. “It is likely that your friends will learn of the city’s fate and move on, long before we could reach them.”

Sokka kind of regretted standing, because he felt a little like the floor was sliding under him, like the phantom rolling of their raft on the waves—unsteady. He pressed his knuckles into his eyes, and resisted the urge to scream in frustration.

Why couldn’t _anything_ just be _easy?_

“I know this news may be difficult for you—”

“No! This isn’t difficult!” Sokka said. He took a breath, tried to hold it, and then winced as it tugged his burned side. “Finding Aang and Katara in Omashu would have been difficult!” He dragged his fingers roughly through his hair. “This is…”

Impossible. 

It was impossible. 

How could he _possibly_ find them, in all of the Earth Kingdom, on foot—

Iroh rested a hand on his shoulder, gently, eyes soft with sympathy.

“Perhaps for now, continuing to hunt for the Avatar is not the answer,” Iroh said. He was looking at his nephew while he said it, and didn’t flinch when Zuko turned his glare on him, instead. “I am merely suggesting that there are more immediate problems to solve. Princess Azula—”

The door opened again, and Iroh cut off abruptly, as all three of them turned to stare. Sokka cringed immediately, because wow, _that_ wasn’t suspicious at all. His heart was pounding, but Iroh’s hand was still there on his shoulder—he tried to focus on that, and not the anxiety churning in his stomach.

Song hesitated for only a moment, taking in the scene, before she let herself into the room.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Song said, pretending politely not to notice the tension, or the cageyness. “It’s good to walk around a little, if you’re feeling up to it.” 

She had an enormous wooden box in her arms, the corner of it propped against the wall to keep from dropping it. It looked heavy, and Zuko made a half-aborted move to help her before Song hefted the box up onto the table on her own. 

“You looked like you could use some fresh clothes,” she said, pulling the lid back to show them. 

The box was stacked to the brim with old clothes, folded and jammed in as tightly as they would fit. The fabric was worn, some worse than others, but all clean. Zuko eyed the box warily, like it might give him septapox if he got too close.

“Are these… dead people clothes?” he whispered to his uncle.

Sokka thumbed the fabric of one of the tunics from the top of the stack and held it up to the light. It definitely looked second-hand, with a few carefully placed stitches along the threadier edges of the seams. Everything was in varying shades of Earth Kingdom greens and browns, work clothes, mostly, without any embellishments, but warm and comfortable. It definitely beat scorched spa robes, spotted with blood and filthy from nights spent running through the forest.

Anyway, he would need it, if he was going to...

“That’s very kind,” Iroh said. “I’m afraid we can’t afford much.”

“Please, these were all donated,” she said. “You’re welcome to take anything that fits. And let me find you a pair of boots,” she added to Sokka. “I’ll be right back.”

“ _Donated_ ,” Zuko muttered under his breath, once she was out of earshot. He was hovering over Sokka’s shoulder, peering into the box with a look of deep skepticism. It wasn’t like they could be picky—all of them were still wearing the light robes from the resort. They were too obviously Fire Nation in style and color, and even if they weren’t, they wouldn’t stand up to heavy wear.

Sokka picked out a plain green tunic. Every pair of pants he pulled out ran slightly too long. Katara could have fixed it for him, but he didn’t know how to hem them himself, so he settled for rolling them up. Zuko joined him, reluctantly, in sorting through the piles. 

It was honestly a little creepy, watching Zuko and Iroh holding up green-and-brown tunics, looking… normal, like just another pair of Earth Kingdom refugees. That was what they would _have_ to be, though, if they wanted to travel through the Earth Kingdom undiscovered. Zuko caught Sokka staring as he pulled his new light-green shirt over his head, and flushed red.

“What?” he asked. Sokka shrugged. 

“You look weird in green,” Sokka said, wondering if he’d turn purple. Zuko scoffed. 

“Well you look weird with—here,” Zuko said. He reached over to dig into the open pocket of his bag, and flung something at Sokka’s head. His reflexes weren’t quite back up to normal, so it smacked him in the cheek, and fell on the floor. 

Sokka grabbed it, with one hand bracing his side and a glare fixed firmly on Zuko. He turned it over in his hand. It was the leather hairband Zuko had been using, before he’d cut his ponytail off. He ran a thumb over the grooves, where the sides were embossed with a simple braided pattern. It seemed surprisingly humble, for a prince.

“For your hair,” Zuko added, because he clearly thought Sokka was stupid. 

“Yeah, I got that,” Sokka said. He hesitated. “Thanks.” Sokka pulled his wolf tail back with the tie. “I’ll put it toward your debt.”

Zuko sputtered. “What _debt_?”

“You still owe me, for saving you from your sister,” Sokka said. “You’d have walked right into her brig if I hadn’t—”

“I practically carried you all the way here,” Zuko said. “We’re even.”

“We’re _not_ even. Who’s fault is it that I got burned in the first place?” 

“Your own! Azula captured you without my help.”

“ _You’re the one who—_ ” Sokka started to say.

Iroh cut them off with a pointed, if pleasant, “Boys, perhaps this is an argument for another time.” 

Sokka scoffed, but before he could say anything else, Song let herself back into the room with a pair of boots in one hand. 

“Here,” Song said. The boots were a loose fit, but it was better than going barefoot. They’d be even better, with a pair of thick socks, if he could find some in the donations pile.

“Thank you,” Iroh said. “It seems we were very lucky to end up here. Isn’t that right, Junior?” 

Sokka stifled a laugh while Zuko shot his uncle an absolutely withering look. 

“You’re refugees, aren’t you?” Song asked. Zuko glanced up from the box with a thin frown. “I don’t mean to pry. Just, my mother and I were refugees too, once. I understand what you’re going through.”

Sokka was absolutely _positive_ that she didn’t. 

Zuko nodded hesitantly anyway, and she continued, “I’m sure my mother wouldn’t mind, if I invited you to our home for dinner before you have to move on.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Iroh said.

“But no,” Zuko interrupted. “We should be going.”

“Where do you live, exactly?” Iroh asked, undeterred.

“I’m starving,” Sokka added, pointedly ignoring the irritated noise Zuko made. He tugged his new boots on quickly, and stood to test them. Zuko seemed to be trying to scream at his uncle with his eyes, and Iroh was steadfastly pretending not to notice.

Whatever. It was two on one, and Zuko _owed_ him. Sokka was eating a real meal for once, and then _Zuko_ was going to help _him_ find the Avatar.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Song had locked up the clinic, Sokka was feeling better, well enough to walk _without_ Zuko’s annoying hovering… which was good, because Zuko had been pouting since he and Iroh outvoted him, as though he wasn’t just as starving as the rest of them. The discomfort from his side was nothing compared to his eagerness to eat real food, at a table, with both hands untied and no threats from Fire Nation royalty hanging over his head.

She led them down one of the side paths branching off the main road, winding up into the hills where the forest and the elevation created an illusion of privacy. They passed farmland along the way, but it was too dark to see what was growing and too early in the season for there to be much to look at, anyway. It stretched on for several miles, though, with the distant light of Song’s house guiding them up the hillside.

Her house seemed much too large for just two people. Sokka almost thought to say as much—and then his mind supplied the explanation, why only two people might be living in a home this big, and he kept his observation to himself.

Song’s mother was waiting when they arrived. She smiled and waved Iroh off as he apologized for the intrusion, as though it really was no trouble for her to feed five mouths instead of two without warning. The dining room was open to the cool night air. She quickly set the table for guests with tea and bowls of soup. 

Song sat down at one side of the table, next to the cushion at the head of the table that must have been reserved for her mother. Sokka quickly grabbed the seat beside her, so that he wouldn’t have to sit beside Zuko. His burn twinged as he lowered himself onto his knees. He shifted around until he was sitting with his legs crossed instead, wincing. 

“Thank you for the invitation to your lovely home,” Iroh said, when Song’s mother came back into the room. She was carrying a tray with some kind of roast duck with vegetables, and the smell of it alone was enough to make Sokka want to cry.

Zuko had looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but here on the entire walk to Song’s home, but he looked at the duck like it was the most offensive thing that he had ever seen. Thankfully, Song’s mother was too preoccupied carving off slices to notice his expression. Sokka rolled his eyes. He was such a snooty jerk. It wasn’t like they could be _picky_ , and he was going to be in for a pretty rude awakening when he realized it. 

Sokka glared at him, and maybe he realized that he was being incredibly rude, or maybe he just remembered that he was still annoyed at Sokka and his uncle for forcing him to come here, because he turned to glare at his soup instead. At least he was _polite_ , when he turned down Song’s mother’s offer of the duck. 

Whatever. He could stick to his soup and vegetables. Sokka didn’t care—more meat for him. 

Song’s mother smiled at Iroh, and served him a piece, and then served Sokka two. 

Sokka liked Katara’s cooking. She was pretty good at it, and if he gave her a hard time about it that was just his prerogative as an older brother, but there was something about a home cooked meal that even Katara would agree she couldn’t match. It made him miss his Gran Gran. His mother, too, but that wasn’t the same kind of ache. 

Sokka focused on his food, instead, and for a while they ate in hungry silence—at least, Sokka did. _Zuko_ looked deeply uncomfortable, even more so beside his uncle, who seemed completely at home at their table. 

Song’s mother smiled faintly when Sokka started eyeing seconds. She leaned over to refill his plate, and took the opportunity to clear her throat and glance over toward Iroh. 

“My daughter tells me you’re refugees,” she said lightly. “We were once refugees ourselves.”

The look she gave Iroh was full of sympathy, with a strange sort of understanding in her eyes that reminded him of the way Dad and Gran Gran’s eyes would meet over the fire, when they were trying to work their way around a topic they didn’t want Sokka to worry about. It used to make him bristle, back when they were still together, when he was still indignantly trying to insist he was grown. That look dug a lot deeper, the night before the men left. It mostly just made him homesick, now.

“That must have been hard,” Sokka said, glancing away from the exchange to look at Song. She smiled a little and scraped her chopsticks over the edge of her plate, picking around the lotus leeks she’d shuffled to the side. 

“It… was. But that was a long time ago,” Song said. She hesitated, like he hadn’t quite decided whether to leave it there. She glanced across the table at Zuko. Their eyes met. She sighed. She straightened her shoulders. “When I was a little girl, the Fire Nation raided our farming village. All the men were taken away. That was the last time I saw my father.”

The words made Sokka’s chest constrict. He took a sip of his soup, trying to force the feeling down enough to respond. Zuko beat him to it.

“I haven’t seen my father in many years,” Zuko said. 

Sokka’s head snapped up. That was _not_ the same thing. Sokka glared at him while Song asked if Zuko’s father was fighting in the war, and _Zuko said yes_ when he knew damn well that that wasn’t what she meant. Sokka’s sympathy for Song hardened into something unpleasant in his chest, as he met Zuko’s eye. 

Sokka couldn’t _believe_ him. Zuko didn’t even look sorry for lying, or—maybe not lying, but definitely not telling the whole truth. He clenched his hands into fists under the table. 

“The Fire Nation attacked our village, too,” Sokka said, feeling a vindictive jab in his chest at the startled look on Zuko’s face. 

He _wasn’t_ going to give them away, but it served Zuko right to worry that he was. He held Zuko’s gaze steadily as he continued. 

“At first they took our benders,” he said. “But by the time they were done there weren’t enough _benders_ to take. So they just killed the last person they suspected of being a bender. My—my mom. My dad left a few years later, to fight in the war, so it was just me and my sister, but...” 

There was something satisfying, in the way Zuko’s eyes widened. He told himself that was what it was—satisfying—and ignored the guilt that came after, when Zuko turned down to stare at his food. 

None of them had seen their fathers in years, but it _wasn’t_ the same. 

“We got separated,” Sokka finished. 

“Oh,” Song said, “I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Sokka said. “It wasn’t _your_ fault.”

Zuko was still staring at his bowl, but his fingers tightened around his chopsticks, and his expression… well, he looked sad. Sokka hadn’t even expected him to understand, let alone care. Maybe it should make him feel better. He’d _wanted_ Zuko to feel guilty— 

“Did you want to look for your father?” Iroh asked. Sokka startled, slightly, and tore his eyes away from Zuko. “You said he is fighting the Fire Nation.”

Sokka blinked. _Did_ he—?

He hadn’t even thought about it, but… but maybe it wouldn’t be impossible to track down the water tribe fleet. He’d found Bato, once, so maybe he could find his dad, too. By now they would have moved on from the rendezvous with Bato, but _someone_ must know where the Southern Water Tribe fleet was. The fleet would be easier to track than a single flighty kid, no matter how hard the Earth Kingdom generals they were working with tried to help cover their tracks. 

“I want to,” Sokka said. He desperately wanted to see his dad again, to join the other men. They couldn’t say he wasn’t old enough, now, not when he had been fighting the Fire Nation for months, but... “But I have to find my sister.”

Dad didn’t _need_ him. Maybe Katara didn’t need him anymore, either, but he’d made a promise to dad when he’d left, to take care of Katara and to take care of the village. He was going to keep one of those promises, at least. 

“What’s your sister’s name?” Song’s mother asked. “I volunteer at one of the shelters in town. If she passed through here, maybe we’ve met.”

“Katara,” Sokka said, just _daring_ Zuko to give him another lecture on sharing details. He wasn’t even _looking_ at Sokka, just staring resolutely at his bowl as he picked around it with his chopsticks. “And she’d be traveling with a kid. Aang. He’s the—he’d have an arrow, right here.” He pointed to his forehead. 

“An arrow?” she asked, looking puzzled, and a little amused. “No, I haven’t seen anyone like that. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s all right,” Sokka said. He hadn’t really expected them to. They were way too close to the Fire Nation occupied territories, and Aang and Katara would have flown right over them, if they were smart. 

(Hopefully they were being smart. Sokka wasn’t there to be the voice of reason, to help them navigate, or make a plan...)

“There have been so many refugees passing through lately, I’m sure she was with them,” Song said.

She sounded almost consoling, and Sokka hadn’t—he hadn’t been thinking about all the things that could go wrong, the reasons she might need to console him, and he wasn’t going to think about them now. 

“Most of the refugees that pass through are on their way to Ba Sing Se,” Song’s mother added. “We are all trying to escape the Fire Nation, in one way or another.”

“Yeah,” Sokka said. “I guess. I just...”

“You miss them,” Song said, when Sokka couldn’t continue. He nodded. “I’m sure your family misses you, too. And your father and your sister will be so happy when you see them again—”

She was interrupted by the scrape of a chair across the wooden floor, too loud in the quiet. 

“Thank you for the meal,” Zuko said. He was out of his chair, and out the door before anyone could say anything more, half of his food left untouched. Sokka met Iroh’s eye over the table and stubbornly stuffed another dumpling into his mouth. If Zuko wanted to go hungry, that was his problem, but Sokka wasn’t stupid enough to think that they were going to be eating this well while they were traveling. 

Song’s mother watched Zuko go, and then glanced at Iroh’s concerned face. 

“There’s plenty more in the kitchen. Would you like to take some with you?” Song’s mother asked. “I know it can be… difficult, but that doesn’t mean we want them to go hungry.” 

Sokka huffed under his breath, and pointedly stuffed another piece of duck into his mouth. It was _delicious_ and Zuko was just being dramatic, and stupid, and rude—

She rose from her spot at the table, and Iroh stood to follow her back into the kitchen. 

“That would be excellent, thank you,” Iroh said. “Your home is as lovely as—” 

He closed the door behind him, before Sokka could hear anymore, but even the door couldn’t muffle the flirtatious laugh that followed. Song made a face, smiling a little, and Sokka couldn’t help but smile back at her. 

“Should we sit outside with Lee?” Song asked, already rising from the table. Sokka sighed, and hastily finished his bowl, not really wanting to sit alone in the dining room, and wanting even less to be left alone with the muffled conversation between Zuko’s uncle and Song’s mom’s through the doorway.

Song grabbed a plain, wooden box from the center of the table, and then led the way out. 

Zuko was brooding on the porch, legs folded under him like he’d been trying to meditate. He looked anything but calm and centered, though, glaring into the yard like it had personally offended his honor. 

He tensed a little, when Sokka came to sit beside him.

“Has your uncle always been such a flirt?” Sokka asked. That was definitely _not_ what Zuko had expected him to say, but the surprise only lasted a moment. Sokka nearly laughed when Zuko’s expression collapsed into something much closer to a grimace. Song _did_ laugh, just a little, the sound high and sweet.

She sat down on Zuko’s other side, and pulled the box she’d retrieved from the table into her lap. It was filled with little brown disks, pressed into flower shapes. 

“They’re yakgwa,” she said, seeing Zuko’s skeptical face. “Honey pastries. If you don’t want any—”

“I’ll eat his,” Sokka said, leaning over to take two. He put one in his mouth—it was sweet, and a little sticky, and of _course_ it tasted like more ginger. Zuko scowled at him. 

“You just ate,” he said. “Do you ever stop eating?” 

“Not if I get a choice,” Sokka said, thinking of their three weeks of eating almost nothing, and the weeks before that eating travel rations, and the lean years after the men left… He shook his head, dispelling the thought. “Do they not eat sweets in th—where you’re from?” 

Zuko glared at him. 

“Uncle certainly does,” Zuko said, in a way that made Sokka think that maybe the rest of them didn’t. That wasn’t exactly surprising. Azula seemed like the kind of person who didn’t indulge in anything, and Sokka couldn’t imagine the Fire Lord doing anything but brooding evilly over a pit of fire—but still, that was just sad. Sokka leaned over to take another, and dropped it in Zuko’s hand before he could complain. 

“Do you know where you’ll go next?” Song asked. 

“No,” Zuko said quickly, before Sokka had a chance to reply. He shot Sokka a warning look, probably worried he would say something that his sister could use to find them. 

Song nodded, and if she was offended by Zuko’s brusque answer, she didn’t show it. 

“I understand. It’s hard to decide where to go, especially when you’re leaving something behind,” she said. “For the longest time, I was worried that if my father came back, he wouldn’t know where to find us.” She sighed, a little self-deprecating, and undeniably sad. “That was before I realized he—well, I was young. I didn’t really understand, yet.”

“It’s only been a few weeks since I saw my sister, and it’s been years since I saw my dad, and I _do_ miss him, but…” Sokka broke the cookie in his hands in half, and then quarters, eating none of it. “Katara and I have been together our whole lives. I’m not used to not having her around to talk to.”

“You sound like you were close,” Song said. 

“Yeah,” Sokka said. “She’s super annoying. And she never listens to me, but. We got separated, and I’m worried I won’t be able to find her again.” He was worried they _would_ find her again, too, although he couldn’t say that without Song wondering why. “Or—I’m worried the Fire Nation will find her, first.”

Zuko didn’t react to that, except to glance over at Sokka, the faintest frown on his lips. Sokka had meant it generally, but Zuko looked worried in a way he didn’t usually, and… he _hadn’t_ been thinking about Azula, hadn’t considered that she might not come to capture her brother, like she’d been sent to do, but might pick up where Zuko had left off with the Avatar, instead. 

“They won’t,” Zuko said. The promise wasn’t as reassuring as he probably thought it was. 

Zuko’s whole thing with the Fire Nation was—so weird. Sokka just didn’t get why he acted the way that he did, _especially_ if he’d been banished from the Fire Nation _three years_ ago. 

Song cleared her throat, somewhat awkwardly. Sokka abruptly realized that he’d been staring, and Zuko, too stubborn to back down, had been glaring back at him like a challenge. 

“The Fire Nation has hurt you both,” Song said. 

Sokka scowled. Of course, just looking at Zuko, wearing second-hand Earth Kingdom work clothes, she’d never guess he was a prince. She’d certainly never guess that, if anything, Zuko was the one who’d done the hurting. 

Sokka could understand why she’d assumed, though.

When he glanced over at Zuko, he was wearing a matching frown, which just made him more annoyed.

“Hah, well,” Sokka said bitterly. “I don’t know if it’s the same.” 

It wasn’t the same. They had nothing in common.

(He looked at Zuko’s face. Without really thinking about it, Sokka’s hand drifted down to his side, hovering over the phantom shape of where the soldier’s hand had laid—)

“It’s _not_ the same,” Zuko snapped. 

Song’s face softened with sympathy. 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. 

If anything, the gentleness in her tone made Zuko’s scowl deepen. She frowned at his reaction, knowing and a little sad.

Song bent to roll up her pant leg, and Zuko went very still. Her leg was covered in mottled burn scars, twisting up her calf like tongues of flame. Sokka pictured Zuko’s sister, setting the basket alight with her heel, and the fire lashing up her calf as though she couldn’t feel its heat. Flames like that... a burn that size… 

The back of Sokka’s neck prickled with sweat. She met his gaze and saw straight through him. 

“I was, too,” Song said simply, calmly, “A lot of people have been, even if you can’t always see the injuries.”

Song leaned over and touched his hand lightly, and Sokka realized his fingers were clenched tightly in the fabric of his new tunic, curled white-knuckled over his bandaged side. He huffed and forced himself to relax, one finger at a time.

“You should be fine in a couple of weeks,” she said, nodding slightly toward Sokka’s bandaged side. She tugged her pant leg back down, perfunctory. She glanced at Zuko then, and considered him for a long moment.

“Mine healed a long time ago,” she added, without a hint of judgement in her gaze, even though he’d been nothing but rude and snappish all evening, “but I think we both know the skin heals fastest.”

For a moment Zuko just stared at her, tensing, poised shivering on the edge of understanding. It clicked. He flushed and shoved himself to his feet. 

“I healed _fine!_ ” Zuko shouted, loud enough that the soft murmur of voices from inside paused. 

He didn’t even bother with the stairs, just hopped off the porch and tromped directly through the flowerbeds framing the house. He stalked away, shoulders impossibly tense, like he was bracing himself for them to come after him.

“Don’t worry about him,” Sokka said, watching Zuko’s retreating back. “He’s just. Like that.” 

“He’s angry,” Song said. “I understand the feeling.” 

Sokka laughed. “Really? You don’t seem like the temper tantrum type,” he said. 

She smiled at him, laughing a little herself, but her eyes were lingering on the dark grounds where Zuko had disappeared. Maybe she was considering going after him. Maybe she _liked_ him, and Sokka wasn’t sure where the flush of indignation that rose in his chest came from, whether it was jealousy that a pretty girl like her would look at that jerk twice, or simply protectiveness, because she didn’t even _know_ him. 

Certainly, she didn’t know him like Sokka did—

“There you are,” Song’s mother said. Sokka startled a little at the unexpected sound, and then winced when he turned slightly too quickly, to look back at her. She smiled apologetically.

“Your uncle is waiting for you out front,” she said. “He says you need to get going, soon.”

“Sure, okay,” Sokka said, not really wanting to explain that _Mushi_ wasn’t his uncle. Her smile reminded him so much of Gran Gran that he couldn’t help smiling back.

“Let me help you clean up,” Song said to her mother. She paused to nod to Sokka, and added, “It was nice meeting you. I hope you can find your sister.”

“Thanks,” Sokka said. “It was nice meeting you, too.”

Sokka stood for a moment on the porch, staring off in the direction Zuko had gone. He considered just shouting for him, and letting him find them when he was done being dramatic, but… Sokka thought about the look on his face, when he’d seen Song’s burn, or Sokka’s burn for that matter, and he thought, Zuko had been acting weird since he’d cut his hair. He’d told his uncle he was _fine_ , but...

Ugh. Sokka stuck his hands into the worn pockets of his borrowed clothes, and jumped off the porch into the wet grass. He didn’t know why he cared. He probably _shouldn’t_ care.

But maybe he’d just… check on him.

Sokka stomped through the grass in his new boots, scattering fireflies and ladycrickets as he went. 

He found Zuko sitting on the ground, facing the forest with his back to the house. Out here, the thin light from the barn lanterns just barely reached them. Zuko’s expression was cast in shadows, and it was hard to see where his attention lay in the darkness. He seemed to be staring out into the dark forest, lost in thought as his gaze wandered through the densely packed trees. 

Zuko didn’t notice him at first, arms wrapped around his right knee, the other leg outstretched. Sokka paused and just watched him for a moment. He didn’t want to startle him—one burn was plenty, thanks. 

Sokka scuffed the ground with his new boots, a little louder than he normally would have. Zuko tensed, and then tilted his head slightly to the right, the only indication that he’d heard him coming. Sokka eased down onto the grass next to him, hand braced against his side. Zuko huffed and turned away while Sokka settled, cross-legged. 

“Your uncle says it’s time to go,” Sokka said. 

“Fine,” Zuko said. “I’ll… in a minute.”

He was clearly not happy to be followed, which was fine, because Sokka didn’t particularly _want_ to talk to him, either. But his curiosity was, apparently, burning more than his self-preservation was.

With his face tipped away, Sokka couldn’t see the scar, only the soft relief of his cheek, the stubble from his hair and the stupid little patch on the back of his head. When he’d been chasing them across the world, he’d looked all kinds of things—scary, mostly, not that Sokka would admit it, and jerk-ish, which was an observation he’d be _happy_ to share. 

Like this he just looked young, which was… weird. And uncomfortable. Sokka rubbed his palm against his knee. He tilted his head, listening to the distant sound of ladycrickets chirping in the grass, letting the stillness of the night air settle over him. He could almost ignore the dull ache in his side, sitting still like this. It could almost be peaceful.

“Are you ever going to let me fix your hair?” Sokka asked after a long moment. 

That probably wasn’t the best place to start, as far as extending fig-olive branches went, but Sokka had never been particularly good at reigning his thoughts in once they leapt into his mind. Zuko looked startled, like that was the last thing he’d expected him to say. His eyes narrowed. 

“It’s not that bad,” Zuko said. 

“That’s… that’s a bold statement, from someone who doesn’t have to look at it—”

“Fine,” Zuko snapped. “Fine, just do it.”

Sokka leaned forward a little, surprised. “Really?”

“Or _don’t_ ,” Zuko said. “You’re so… I don’t care. Do what you want.”

Sokka scooted a little closer in the grass. He was probably getting his not-so-new pants dirty, but Sokka doubted they were going to stay nice and grass stain free for long, anyway, so it wasn’t really worth worrying about. Sokka tapped his index finger against Zuko’s pocket, silently asking permission. 

Zuko grudgingly pulled out his knife. He let go reluctantly when Sokka reached out to take it, with a pinched expression on his face, like he was second guessing himself. 

“I’ll try not to cut your ear off,” Sokka said lightly, just to make Zuko scowl at him again. He chuckled, a bit to himself, and set the sheath aside in the grass. The knife was sharp, and well maintained despite the weeks at sea. Not as good as _Sokka’s_ knife, of course, even with Zuko hell-bent on ruining the blade… but still, not bad.

The blade had an inscription. Sokka held it up briefly to the light to read it. 

“Never give up without a fight,” Sokka read aloud. 

“Uncle gave it to me,” Zuko said. He looked almost immediately self-conscious for volunteering that, an expression that easily slid back into his usual sour scowl. Sokka turned the blade over, then snorted. 

“The other side’s a little less inspiring,” Sokka said.

“Would you just hurry up?” Zuko said.

“Fine, fine,” Sokka said. 

He pressed the pads of his fingers against the side of Zuko’s head, gently tilting him toward the light. The stubble on Zuko’s sides was already starting to grow, neglected in the excitement of the last couple days. He’d just trim the back to match, so that he could start growing it in. Bald wasn’t a great look, in Sokka’s opinion. He’d rarely met anyone who wore bald well, except for the sorts of old men who looked like they’d sprung fully formed with beards and bald heads, or Aang, who wore it so proudly that he couldn’t help but think it suited him.

Zuko, though… the ponytail was a weird choice, honestly. He had nice hair, not that Sokka was particularly paying attention to that. The way he’d cut it off made Sokka think there was a reason for the style though, like it mattered. 

The blade rasped against the short hairs, trimmed down in a few short strokes. Sokka wanted to ask about it, but Zuko already seemed annoyed, and weirdly tense, holding himself so stiff that he might as well have been carved from jade. Sokka had other questions on the tip of his tongue, and he was going to choose his battles.

Besides, it seemed pretty clear that they’d meant to cut ties with their old lives, to get a fresh start, and in the end it wasn’t the haircut that mattered, it was the _why_. Were Zuko and his uncle just… refugees now? Starting fresh? Or was there still a risk that they would go back to the way they’d been before?

Sokka paused, then wiped the blade clean on Zuko’s pant leg. Zuko scowled and snatched it back from him, so roughly that Sokka had to either let go of the knife or get cut.

“Why was your sister here to arrest you?” Sokka asked, while Zuko returned the knife to its sheath. 

Zuko huffed. He drew his other leg up to his chest, so that he was hugging his knees. “Shouldn’t you know? You were the one who figured it out,” he said.

“I mean…” Sokka trailed off. “I mean, why was she even _able_ to arrest you?”

“You’ve met her. I don’t think there’s anything she can’t do,” Zuko said. 

“Zuko. You’re a prince,” Sokka said, plainly, “Why is the prince of the Fire Nation getting arrested by his own sister?”

Zuko turned to look at him. His eyes narrowed slightly. He knew what Sokka meant, but he still didn’t say anything. 

“She said you were banished,” Sokka said. “She said _three years_ , you’ve been looking for Aang, but we only found him a few months ago.”

A muscle in Zuko’s jaw ticked. “So what?” he said. 

“So,” Sokka said, shrugging. “You must have done _something_. What was it?”

Something bad enough to be banished from the Fire Nation, apparently. The Fire Lord wanted the Avatar, but he couldn’t have wanted him _that badly_ , not when Aang hadn’t been seen for a hundred years. 

Zuko’s expression was so carefully blank that it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His mouth parted, just slightly, and Sokka could practically see him balancing on the precipice of something, considering whether to jump, considering whether he’d land safely at the bottom or be bashed against the rocks. He sighed. 

“I spoke out of turn,” Zuko said.

Sokka blinked.

“That’s it?” Sokka asked. 

Three years, for that. Zuko would have been, what, younger than Katara? He’d thought Zuko had done something horrible to get his dad to banish him...

...but maybe he was thinking about things backwards. He already knew the Fire Lord was the horrible one. Zuko was a jerk, but he wasn’t—well, he wasn’t as bad as the Fire Lord, anyway, at least not from what Sokka had seen.

Zuko’s mouth opened, closed. He hesitated, grit his teeth. 

“It’s none of your business, anyway,” Zuko said. 

“It kinda feels like my business,” Sokka said. 

“Well, it’s _not_ ,” Zuko said. “And it doesn’t matter anymore. I—” He shook his head, then shoved himself roughly to his feet. “Just leave me alone.”

“We’re leaving,” Sokka called after him. 

“I heard you the first time,” Zuko said. “Just go. I’ll catch up.”

Sokka was much slower to rise, and by the time he’d found his feet, Zuko had stalked off in the direction of the barn. Sokka watched him go, frowning. 

“Did you find Lee?” Iroh asked. Sokka rolled his eyes. 

“ _Lee_ is off moping behind the barn,” Sokka said. “I told him we were going.”

Iroh hummed. “Perhaps we should…”

“What do I care? Let him mope,” Sokka said. “He said he’d catch up.”

Iroh squinted out into the darkness, toward the barn, watching even as Sokka began stalking up the road. After a moment he heaved a sigh. Iroh nodded, partly to himself, satisfied with whatever he’d seen.

Sokka was still full from dinner, and he was tired. They’d been doing a lot of walking lately, and they had a long way to go, so it only made sense to conserve energy. Plus, Iroh was an old guy, and Sokka wanted to make sure he would keep up. So if he was walking slowly, it was _just_ because he was tired, and considerate. 

Sokka kicked a rock, and watched the grass on the side of the road burst into a cloud of fruit gnats. The house was already out of sight by the time the gravel crunched behind them, and Sokka relaxed slightly, despite himself. Iroh slowed, and that was when the second, much heavier, set of footsteps caught up to him. 

Sokka stopped dead on the road. Zuko stopped too, and raised his eyebrow. There was a challenge in his expression, behind his deadpan scowl. 

“Did you _steal her ostrich horse?_ ” Sokka hissed. 

“Prince Zuko,” Iroh said. “These people just showed you great kindness.”

“And now they’re showing us a little more kindness,” Zuko said. He tugged on the ostrich horse’s reins. “You can—”

“What is wrong with you?” Sokka said. His voice came out a bit strangled, too loud in the stillness of the evening. “You _robbed_ them? You have to take it back right now!”

Zuko stopped, with his hand hovering caught half-way through a motion. He tugged the reins closer to himself, instead, and scowled. 

“It’s a long journey. An ostrich horse will be useful,” Zuko said, as though Sokka had just said something particularly stupid. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

He didn’t wait for Sokka’s response, just tugged the ostrich horse along after him and continued up the road, stomping heavily over the loose gravel. Iroh sighed, a vague look of disapproval flickering over his features before he carried on as well. 

The look he’d sent Sokka was obviously a challenge, as he urged the stolen ostrich horse forward. He was just daring Sokka to get fed up and go. 

Sokka wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

The food Song’s mother had given them had been enough for three days. They’d made it stretch to six, splitting small portions between them, with water from the river, and whatever they would manage to forage and agree, through mutual consensus, probably wouldn’t kill them. That had been days ago, and now Sokka was starving, with nothing but the scant food they managed to gather as they walked. 

Even the hunger wasn’t enough to distract him completely, though. He was tense. They’d been walking for days, and all Sokka could focus on was wondering when the other shoe would drop, because Iroh had suggested in the clinic that they shouldn’t search for Aang after all—that they had _bigger problems_ with Azula chasing them, that might not be resolved simply by finding Aang—and they hadn’t talked about it since. 

So, were they still hunting Aang? Did Sokka want them to be? Maybe it would be better if Zuko really did give up, and Sokka could just travel with them for as long as he needed to, before he got enough of a lead to break off on his own—

Zuko had seemed… off, since they’d left Song’s house. At first Sokka had thought it was just the burn, or maybe their conversation afterwards, or maybe he was even feeling guilty, for once, for what the Fire Nation had done. 

Whatever the case, he was being weirdly quiet. He didn’t even have any opinions, when they hit a fork in the road, and Sokka and Iroh had been trying to decide which direction they wanted to take. Zuko, the guy who hadn’t wanted to sail twenty feet to port when Sokka told him to just because it was his raft to command, _hadn’t had an opinion_. 

(Maybe Sokka should just enjoy the peace, since Zuko was usually so loud and _so_ annoying, but…)

Sokka wasn’t _worried_ , necessarily, he was just an observant guy, and if something was wrong… he just wanted to be sure it wasn’t going to get in the way of finding Aang and Katara. 

They’d been walking for half the day, mostly in silence, by the time the road finally peaked over a slow rise, and they spotted the next town. From here, Sokka could see that the town was much smaller than the last one, with only a few small houses lined up on either side of the road. He grinned at Iroh, anyway. 

“Thank the spirits,” Sokka said. “I am so sick of sleeping in the woods.”

“We’re not stopping,” Zuko said firmly. “We’re just getting supplies.”

“Maybe we can find somewhere to stay,” Sokka said, stubbornly ignoring him. 

Zuko gestured broadly at the dirt in front of them. Sokka rolled his eyes. 

“I mean somewhere comfortable,” Sokka said. He had a little money, and he was sure that Iroh did too. There definitely wasn’t enough to stay at an inn, and anyway, that seemed like a waste when they ought to be saving their money to buy food. But maybe if they walked closer to town, the trees might thin out enough for them to make a proper camp. “I’m sure Beaky is tired of sleeping rough, after you _stole_ him from his nice, warm stable—”

“We can’t afford a stable. And it’s a girl ostrich horse, not… wait,” Zuko stalled. “What did you call it?”

“Beaky,” Sokka said. “That’s her name.”

“We’re not calling it Beaky,” Zuko said flatly. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you have another name in mind?” Sokka asked. “What were you calling her?”

“The ostrich horse,” Zuko said, jerking her reins with finality as he started up the road. 

“Hm. Not very catchy,” Sokka said, trailing behind him. 

Zuko tied Beaky to the post outside the shop, while Sokka supervised, and Iroh went ahead into the store. 

The store was tiny, with precariously stacked shelves crammed so tightly into the space that Sokka had to turn sideways to squeeze past them. They were here for _supplies_ , as Zuko had so often reminded them, but Sokka immediately went for the back wall, which looked much more interesting than the groceries set up at the front of the store. 

There was a man sitting behind the counter, but he didn’t greet them when they entered. He just kind of… squinted at them, like he wasn’t even sure he wanted them there, which couldn’t have been very good for business. 

“Good morning!” Iroh said cheerily, like he hadn’t even noticed the way the man was looking at them. _Zuko_ had certainly noticed, glaring back even harder when the man ignored Iroh’s greeting. 

Sokka nudged him with an elbow, which got Zuko glaring at Sokka instead. That was fine, Sokka was used to it by now. He turned back to the shelves, looking for anything interesting. Not that he had any money to spare, but there wasn’t any harm in _looking_ , and maybe they’d find something useful. 

The back shelf was crammed with books that looked like they’d been lifted out of someone’s personal library. Zuko was watching Sokka browse over his shoulder, acting annoyed and pretending he wasn’t interested. 

There was a stack of leaflets that looked like scripts from plays, dog-eared and annotated like they’d been taken directly from a theatre. And maybe they had—there was a box of costumes beneath it, impractical clothes, stage makeup, prop swords and ugly masks...

Zuko hesitated over the box, finger resting on the spine of one of the scripts, so Sokka pulled it down.

“Have you read this one?” Sokka asked. It looked like a dumb romance, so Sokka _doubted_ he had, but he waved it at Zuko anyway. Predictably, he scoffed and rolled his eyes, stomping over to the next shelf to unroll and re-roll every map the man seemed to own. Sokka laughed, and flipped the book open, planning to read a little out loud, just to be _really_ annoying. 

There was an annotation on the inside page. _For Su-Min. When you read this, think of me_.

Sokka snapped the cover shut, suddenly feeling like he was intruding. He glanced around the shop, filled with what had seemed like random stock, and imagined families fleeing the coast ahead of the Fire Nation, weighed down with books and family heirlooms they’d been optimistic enough to bring along. 

And when their loads got too heavy to carry, and their wallets too light to feed themselves, he could easily imagine trading books and jewelry for food and clean water. Sentiment for survival. 

Beside him, Zuko made a frustrated noise and snatched his hand back like the maps had burned him. 

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “Why is everything so expensive?” 

The man behind the counter scowled at him.

“If you don’t like the prices, find another store,” he said. 

“There _are_ no other—” Zuko said. 

“Now, Nephew,” Iroh cut in. He had been hovering over the shelf where all the store’s food was stocked, pondering boxes of tea and doing nothing with the list they’d agreed on buying on the way in. “The man has to feed his family.” 

He stepped up to the counter, but the man only looked more annoyed, when he saw how light the wallet Iroh pulled out was.

“We’d like to buy a few supplies, some feed for our ostrich horse…” 

Sokka turned his back on the counter and jabbed a finger in Zuko’s direction. Zuko swatted at his hand like he was a particularly annoying fruit gnat. 

“If you get us kicked out before your uncle can get supplies, I’m never forgiving you,” Sokka whispered. “I’m _starving_.”

“You just ate,” Zuko said grumpily, even though a few foraged nuts and berries did _not_ count as a real meal. 

He rolled his eyes, and turned back to the shelves. After a second of poking through the clutter, something familiar caught his eye. Sokka picked up the tile, the same white lotus design that Iroh had showed him on the raft. He held it up for Iroh to see. 

“Hey, look! They have a pai sho set,” Sokka said.

“Unless you have the gold for it, put it back,” the teller barked. Sokka almost fumbled the tile.

“I was just looking,” he said.

“Look with your eyes, kid, not with your hands,” he said. 

Sokka stared at him, a little startled by the rudeness in his tone. He put the tile back in its place on the board—it wasn’t even in the right spot, the man had just arranged the tiles at random to look good for the display. The owner didn’t thank him, or even acknowledge it. He just gave Sokka one last hairy eyeball and turned back to picking over Iroh’s list. Sokka stuffed his hands back in his pockets.

“Let’s wait outside,” Sokka said, because Zuko looked about three seconds from throwing himself over the counter, or maybe just burning the shop down. Sokka grabbed his arm and dragged him to the door.

Beaky was right where they’d left her, and Sokka went to stand beside her, out of view of the shop’s open doorway. Zuko jerked his arm out of Sokka’s grip as soon as they were outside, crossing them over his chest instead. 

It was weird. He didn’t expect everyone to be his _best friend_ , but he was still surprised by the venom in the shop keeper’s tone. They’d never had much money before, either, but that hadn’t mattered when—

Well, it was different, when he wasn’t travelling _with the Avatar_. Everyone was nice to Aang, or at least, most people were, and the ones that weren’t were people like the Fire Nation, or those pirates…

Zuko was scowling back at the door, so Sokka gestured for him to come over to where Beaky was pecking at the dusty ground, before Zuko got it in his head to go back inside and finish things. Of _course_ Zuko would get mad over something like that. _Everything_ made Zuko mad, and he was probably used to the royal treatment, being waited on hand and foot, being… well, being a prince. 

“Dude, you’re not a prince anymore, right? You can’t just scream at people when they don’t do what you want,” Sokka said. 

“I wasn’t,” Zuko said. 

“You kind of were,” Sokka said. “So what if we can’t afford the map? We’ll follow the road.”

Zuko scoffed, staring resolutely at the ground. 

“It’s not about the map,” he said quietly, but he didn’t say anything else. He only glanced up when Iroh finally joined them, and even then it was just to take the heavier bag from his uncle’s hands. He turned it over, and even without looking at the label Sokka could tell that it was full of ostrich horse feed, if only from the way Beaky perked up at the sound of grains shifting inside.

The food would be its own problem, especially since the other bag that Iroh had brought out with him was a lot less full than Sokka had been hoping for. At least Beaky was happy, pecking at the outside of the bag of sun oats like she knew it was for her. 

“I don’t suppose you got a good look at the route before you tried to bite the owner’s head off?” Sokka asked.

Zuko gave him a flat look, and Sokka fanned his fingers out placatingly. 

“Fine, fine, just asking. I mean, all roads lead to Ba Sing Se, right?” he said. “No big deal. I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up over.”

“He shouldn’t talk to—to Uncle like that,” Zuko said. 

“Yeah, well,” Sokka said. He gestured at all of the _nothing_ around them. “What’s stopping him? You’re not royalty. I’m not traveling with the Avatar. We’re just two refugees, traveling with their uncle—”

“He’s not your uncle,” Zuko said. 

Sokka raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Iroh. 

“Can I call you Uncle?” he asked. 

“Of course!” Iroh said. 

“Just two refugees and their uncle,” Sokka repeated. 

“He’s _not_ ,” Zuko said, teeth clenched. For a second Sokka thought he might have actually seen steam, before Zuko made a frustrated noise and turned to jerkily untie Beaky from the shop’s post. 

Sokka glanced around quickly, but there wasn’t even anyone outside _to_ see them, so he just rolled his eyes at Zuko instead. The town wasn’t large, and it wasn’t long before they were leaving it behind. Sokka didn’t miss how few people could be seen, or how warily those few people out on urgent errands watched them pass. He thought of the shop, packed full of the remnants of hundreds of peoples lives, uprooted and scattered, and wondered how far inland they would have to go, before they left the scars of the Fire Nation behind them.

Zuko was quiet and moody and _annoying_ for the rest of the day. He didn’t even react to Sokka’s jokes, just scowling at his feet as he walked until Sokka gave up on him and turned to Iroh for better conversation. 

“Maybe if the next town is bigger, we can find some work and make a little money,” Sokka said. Sure, the last time he’d tried that he’d nearly drowned on a fishing trawler in the middle of a storm, but what were the odds of something like that happening twice?

“I’m gonna buy some _real_ meat,” Sokka said. Fish was fine and good, but Sokka missed seal jerky. Hippocow steak. Fried picken—

“The Earth Kingdom has an excellent variety of teas,” Iroh said. “I am looking forward to trying them.” He patted the little kettle that had followed them from the Northern Water Tribe, where it was wrapped up in one of Beaky’s packs.

“Oh, and maybe we can find another pai sho set,” Sokka said. “A _cheaper_ one, and you can teach me to play for real.” 

Iroh smiled at him. “I would like that.”

“We should be avoiding towns altogether,” Zuko said. “The more people that see us, the easier it will be for Azula to track us down.”

“Seriously?” Sokka said. “I know she’s scary intense, but aren’t you being a little paranoid?”

“How do you think we kept finding _you_? Luck?” Zuko asked. He sounded almost like he was laughing at himself for the suggestion.

“Yeah well, recognizing the Avatar is one thing, but no one is going to blink at three refugees headed to Ba Sing Se,” Sokka said.

“We’re recognizable,” Zuko said tensely, gesturing pointedly at his face. 

“Not _that_ recognizable. There are a lot of people with burns in the Earth Kingdom. We can’t avoid every town along the way on the off chance your sister is hunting down every lead.”

“You’re both right,” Iroh said diplomatically. “We will avoid towns where we can, and only stop when necessary.” 

“Fine,” Zuko said, although by the stubborn look on his face Sokka thought he was far from letting it go. Sokka rolled his eyes. They were going to have to stop _eventually_ , because sooner than later they would run out of food, and then money. 

Also, Zuko had actually made a good point, even if he was too much of a jerk to realize it. Aang _was_ recognizable, and asking around whenever they passed through a new town might bring them a new lead on where to find Aang and Katara. 

If not… well, they would get to Ba Sing Se eventually. Maybe the Earth King would be able to help him find Aang. Not that Sokka knew how to get an audience with the Earth King. Sokka was pretty sure that destroying a bunch of city property, mail, and a cabbage cart wasn’t a reliable enough method to try twice, but he would figure it out when they got there. 

Sokka wasn’t sure how long they’d been walking—long enough for the sun to move so that it was shining directly into Sokka’s eyes as they walked, casting long shadows into the grass—before Iroh slowed enough on the road ahead of him that Sokka nearly bumped into his back. He gestured into the trees, but it took Sokka a moment to pick out the smudge of black in the mountainside, and longer to realize that he was looking at a cave. It was just off the road, not _that_ well protected from being spotted by other passerbys, but it looked private, at least, and they wouldn’t have to sleep completely outside—

Zuko handed Beaky’s reins to his uncle. 

“Hey,” Sokka said. He hesitated on the edge of the trail, when he realized that Zuko wasn’t following. “Where are you going?” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Zuko said stiffly. 

“Nephew, it’s going to be dark soon. Are you sure it’s wise to split up?” Iroh called after him. Zuko didn’t answer right away, but after a few more feet he hesitated, and turned back to look at his uncle again. 

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised. 

“Do you want me to come with you?” Sokka called. 

“Absolutely not!” Zuko yelled back. 

Sokka figured that Iroh was more qualified to start the fire than he was, and they were out of the way enough that the light probably wouldn’t be a risk. He set about unpacking their camp, instead, or at least—what Zuko had left for them. Zuko had taken his own bag with him, so Sokka just laid out his turtle seal tarp and his and Iroh’s bedrolls toward the back of the cave where they would hopefully stay dry, even if the gathering clouds decided to make good on their promise and give them a little rain. 

He wasn’t _waiting up_ for Zuko, necessarily. He was just tired from walking. Resting a little before he went out to search for something more to eat alongside the plain rice that Iroh had bought seemed like a good idea. It would be harder in the dark, but the moon was bright and the fishing would probably be better later in the evening, _anyway_ , so really he was just being practical. 

He heard the snapping of branches, first, as someone picked their way through the underbrush, and Sokka glanced up at the sound. Iroh had gotten the fire going hours ago, and the camp was… pleasant, actually, with the warmth from the fire, and the smell of the admittedly simple tea that Iroh had bought for them steeping inside his iron kettle, beside the fire. 

Zuko didn’t look at either of them, and he dropped his bag near the mouth of the cave. 

Except—he’d brought back more than just his own bag, a second one hooked around his wrist, which he carried over with him to the fire. Sokka’s curiosity piqued, despite himself, as he realized that he didn’t recognize it.

“What is all this?” Sokka asked. 

“Supplies,” Zuko said. The bag rattled when he set it on the ground, metal clinking on metal. Sokka stared at it, impossibly curious what was inside, and where he’d gotten it. Zuko dug around in the bag for a moment, and pulled out a teapot with a long spout. 

“Here, Uncle,” he said, setting it down beside the fire carefully. Zuko pulled out a little brown box next, and then hesitated, worrying his thumb over the corner. 

“Where did you get—?” Sokka started to ask, but before he could even finish the question, Zuko had pushed the box into his hands. 

“Here,” he said. Snapped, really, like he was annoyed with something, or—embarrassed, maybe, which only made Sokka more curious. 

Curious and… and suspicious, because Zuko had disappeared for a few hours and then suddenly came back with all the supplies they hadn’t been able to afford, and then some, so...

Sokka didn’t recognize it at first, with the polished wooden lid closed. There was an interesting, geometric engraving on the outside of the box that Sokka ran his thumb over for a moment, trying to puzzle out what they were supposed to represent. The box rattled a little, when Sokka pried open the lid. 

He stared at the neat rows of tiles, the folded board, and snapped the lid shut. Lotus flowers. That was the design on the box, and Sokka hadn’t noticed them because when he’d first seen it, the pai sho set had been laid out for display.

“Did you steal this?” Sokka asked. Zuko had been pointedly not-watching Sokka's reaction, but he glanced away from the fire to look at him now.

“You said you wanted it,” Zuko said. He sounded a little unsure, or maybe he was just irritated that Sokka was interrupting his cooking. 

“I never—I didn’t mean steal it!” Sokka said. Zuko glared at him, and then turned back to the fire, jaw set so tightly that Sokka’s teeth ached in sympathy. 

“Just throw it out then! I don’t care,” Zuko said. “I don’t even like that stupid game.”

“Did you steal the rest of this too? The food?” Sokka asked. Zuko didn’t answer, and Sokka shoved himself to his feet so quickly that pain lanced down his side, radiating out from his burned skin. Sokka tightened his jaw against the pain, his next words pressed through clenched teeth. “I can’t believe you!”

“Why do you even care?” Zuko asked. “They have plenty, and we have nothing.”

“You don’t know what they have,” Sokka said. “You can’t just steal from whoever you want, just because you think you deserve it more!”

“You don’t tell me what to do,” Zuko snapped. 

“You and your uncle are _wanted_ ,” Sokka said. “Do you even care that you might get us in trouble? Or do you just do whatever you want?”

“I’m not going to get caught,” he said. “I was just trying to—” He made a frustrated noise. “We needed supplies!”

“We didn’t need all of this,” Sokka shot back, stabbing a finger at the rest of the pile. Zuko huffed, and a few sparks flew into the space between them.

“Just get your own food, then!” Zuko said.

Sokka scoffed and dropped the gameboard on the dusty cave floor at Zuko’s feet. Zuko looked startled for a second, like he hadn’t expected Sokka to actually do it, but the expression cleared just as quickly as it appeared. Zuko scowled at the bag, pointedly not looking at Sokka as he sorted through the things he’d stolen. All of the things he’d risked getting caught for—risked getting _all of them_ caught for. 

“How do you like your new teapot?” Zuko asked his uncle, pointedly ignoring Sokka as he snatched his knife and stomped past him, out the mouth of the cave. 

“To be honest with you—” Iroh started to reply, but Sokka didn’t hang around to hear the rest. 

The road followed the river. Sokka had made the trip when he was fetching water for Iroh’s tea, and the short walk would be good. A chance to burn off some frustration, at least, snapping branches that blocked his path and stripping leaves from clawing bushes, just for something to do with his hands. 

He didn’t have his boomerang, so he doubted he’d be able to catch himself any real meat, and definitely not with only a thin knife to hunt with. He picked around the river bank for a suitable branch to sharpen into a point. After spending almost three weeks on the ocean, Sokka was pretty sure he could spear the little blue gilled perch lurking along the river bank in his sleep. He caught four little ones, about the width of his palm. He found a tree with nuts that looked edible, and paused for a few minutes to pick the best looking ones from the ground. 

Then he paced around the woods for a few minutes, to burn off his frustration, and maybe to delay going back. Sokka didn’t even know why he was surprised. He knew what Zuko was like. Of _course_ he didn’t care about the people in the Earth Kingdom. Why would he? They were just—peasants to him, and not even Fire Nation. What did he care if a family went hungry, or someone else got in trouble for his theft, or someone came after _them_ , because that shopkeeper had seen Sokka looking at the pai sho set, and then Sokka would _never_ find Katara, because he’d be in an Earth Kingdom prison—

Zuko had finished unloading his bag by the time Sokka returned. Sokka huffed when he noticed that he’d set up his own bedroll on top of Sokka’s tarp. Jerk. Zuko glanced at Sokka pointedly, eyes narrowing as he caught sight of the makeshift spear hanging off his shoulder. 

Zuko had clearly helped himself to someone’s kitchen. There was a new tea set, spout faintly steaming as the tea steeped. He’d set three bowls out by the fire. Zuko dug into the rice with the flat of his spoon and filled two. He shoved one bowl toward his uncle. 

There was meat, too, three chunks skewered and cooking on a new metal pan settled into the glowing coals at the edge of the fire pit. Sokka glared at it—stupid, delicious meat, which Zuko probably stole from someone’s pantry, or mugged a butcher for, or something. 

The skewer sizzled tauntingly when Zuko flipped it. 

Sokka jabbed the end of his spear down into the ground, a little ways back from the fire. He sat half-turned away from Zuko, like he didn’t care what he was doing, because he _didn’t_ , and set to cleaning his catch. They were small enough that it only took him a few minutes.

Iroh had taken the bowl of rice, but he’d left the skewer Zuko offered him alone. Sokka eyed it, but only for a moment. He turned stubbornly back to his catch.

“Would you like one?” Sokka asked. 

“Fresh fish sounds wonderful,” Iroh said, even though they’d pretty much eaten nothing but fresh fish for the last few weeks.

If anything, that made Zuko scowl more. He jabbed his spoon into his rice with a little more force than necessary.

Iroh kept stealing glances at Zuko, his expression fixed somewhere between disapproval and concern, but if Zuko noticed the looks, he didn’t react to them. Sokka didn’t know what they’d talked about while he was gone—didn’t particularly care, either. Zuko was refusing to look at either of them, face tipped down toward the fire so that all Sokka could see was the firelight reflected in his eyes.

Except, it wasn’t the fire Zuko was frowning at. He was glaring at the handful of round, blackened shapes scattered through the coals, paint peeling as the fire slowly consumed them. 

Sokka kept his eyes on his food, feeling strangely guilty, and annoyed at himself for feeling that way. They finished their meals in silence. By the time Sokka curled up in his bedroll with his back to the cave, stubbornly closing his eyes as Iroh fed more fuel to the fire, the rest of the pai sho set had already burned to ashes.

The cave was pitch black when Sokka drifted to the surface of sleep. The fire had burned down to nothing but ashy coals. Groggy, Sokka slowly shifted up on his elbow, peering out into the darkness. His ears rang in the silence.

He was used to waking up in the middle of the night. It was just… a habit, really, from traveling with Aang and Katara. He’d wake suddenly to the darkness, restless, stand and pace around the edge of their camp, just to check, and then he’d crawl back into his sleeping bag, or snuggle up next to Appa again and finally be able to sleep. Sokka wasn’t sure what woke him, this time, but he knew from experience that he wasn’t going to fall back asleep now, not until he’d gotten up and walked around their camp to put his mind at ease. 

Iroh was fast asleep, snoring faintly. Zuko was bundled on the other side of him, still, buried under his blanket.

Sokka eased his blanket back and stood. It was dark, and the cave floor was littered with Zuko’s stupid trinkets, all the things he’d stolen for no reason other than that he could. He walked slowly, careful not to trip over anything. The quiet was unnerving. It felt wrong, and made Sokka’s skin prickle with anticipation. He crouched next to Zuko. Next to… 

Just a lump of bedding, stuffed beneath a spare blanket.

Zuko was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

Sokka whirled toward the cave entrance. Beaky was gone, her rope untied from the little sapling they’d hitched her to. Frustration simmered under his skin. Where was Zuko going? To rob more people, probably. He had to be, if he was sneaking off with Beaky in the middle of the night.

_Something_ had woken Sokka, though. It was probably the sound of Zuko leaving, which meant that he couldn’t have gotten far. Sokka grabbed his bag from next to his bed roll, so that he could dig around for his hair tie as he jogged after him. It wasn’t much brighter outside the cave than inside, sheltered by the tree cover and the incline of the mountain the entrance had been carved into. Sokka had to squint to find the scuff marks on the ground where Beaky’s claws had kicked up dust.

There was a clear path down toward the nearest town, and Sokka almost went to follow it, but… he paused again, reconsidering the marks on the ground before he turned his gaze off into the trees. There were plenty of tracks to choose from, between their walk out here and Zuko’s coming and going. He picked the tracks he thought looked freshest, leading down through the dense brush. It was a five minute walk to the main road from the beaten side path outside the cave, and Sokka jogged the whole way in an attempt to catch up. It was much easier this time to keep his feet in the dark woods, wearing real boots, with his burn well tended to. The exertion made his side pulse, not quite painfully, but hard to ignore. 

Eventually he broke out onto the road on the other side. The road they’d agreed to _avoid_ , earlier, because they didn’t want to be too conspicuous before they figured out where they were going. 

It was empty now, save for Sokka, and Zuko’s retreating back disappearing into the darkness. 

“Zuko!” Sokka called. 

Zuko slowed to a stop. He didn’t look at him though, or even turn around. Sokka grumbled under his breath as he jogged up behind him. Beaky turned her head when he approached, but Zuko didn’t. Sokka stomped around to face him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Sokka asked. “Off to rob more people?”

Zuko just glared at him. He—no, he didn’t glare at Sokka, he was glaring at the road over his shoulder, not quite meeting his eye. There was a wariness in his expression, like he didn’t fully understand why Sokka had bothered to follow him. A little bit of the indignation he’d felt at having caught Zuko in the act bled out of him, uncertainty creeping in. He’d thought Zuko was going back into town, to take more things they didn’t need, just because he could. Sokka stared at him, as all the little cracks in that theory began to show.

The town was the other way. Zuko wasn’t dressed for stealth. He was wearing his layers, the clothes Song had given him, a warm outer robe, a hat, from somewhere, even though it was the middle of the night and the weather was fine. His pack was strapped to Beaky’s saddle, with his bedroll and Sokka’s turtle seal hide tarp bound up with it.

“You’re… not going back to town, are you?” he asked. 

Zuko sighed as Sokka looked him over, halfway between annoyed and resigned. 

“I’m leaving,” Zuko admitted. 

“Why?” Sokka asked. 

“Because…” Zuko looked almost caught off guard by the question. “It’s better this way.”

“Your uncle—”

“Will be fine,” Zuko interrupted tersely. “And I’ll find my own way.”

He said it so stubbornly, like he honestly believed that his uncle would be better off without him. Zuko had been so _weird_ lately, because… because he’d probably been planning this for a while, since his uncle had told him that capturing the Avatar was useless, even. 

If that worried Sokka, it was only because without a goal _or_ his uncle, Zuko was unpredictable. He couldn’t just let him _leave_.

“I’m coming with you,” Sokka said, his own resolve hardening into something equally stubborn.

“No, you’re not,” Zuko said. 

“Well, I’m not just letting you leave!” Sokka shouted.

He _could_ stay with Iroh. He’d certainly be less prickly company, and he wouldn’t try to run off without him in the middle of the night. But Iroh had seemed convinced that hunting the Avatar wasn’t the answer. For Zuko, that was probably true, and just a few days ago Sokka would have been all for the idea, if only to keep Zuko away from them. But now? He _needed_ to find Aang, and Zuko was going to help him. 

That’s why he couldn’t let him go. It had nothing to do with how off he’d seemed ever since they’d left Song’s house. He’d been distant, and lapsed into moods and melancholy and just—seemed tired, but that wasn’t _Sokka’s_ problem, okay, it didn’t matter to him.

He wasn’t worried. It was just practical for Sokka to follow him, because right now Zuko was his best chance of finding his sister again. 

Zuko just ground his teeth, annoyed, and flicked Beaky’s reins. She started forward slowly, still watching Sokka out of the corner of her eye.

“Try and stop me,” Zuko said.

“Then... I’ll tell your uncle that you’re leaving,” he said. 

“Good. Go tell him,” Zuko said. He gestured dismissively, back toward the trees and the cave. Of course, Zuko would be long gone by the time Sokka got back. Sokka crossed his arms stubbornly. Like he was going to fall for _that_.

He hurried a few steps after Zuko, instead, although it was a losing battle from the start. The moment Zuko noticed him following, his scowl set even deeper. He urged Beaky to go faster. She sent him a nasty look out of the corner of her eye, like it was Sokka’s fault that Zuko was running from him.

Sokka followed until Zuko was too far ahead to see in the moonlight, until he hit a bend in the road, until he turned to stare up and down the path with no sign of Zuko or Beaky in either direction. He could try to catch up again, but it wouldn’t matter. An ostrich horse would outpace a person easily, even carrying Zuko and his supplies, even without trying. And Zuko was _definitely_ trying. 

He could turn back. Maybe he _should_ turn back.

Instead, he turned to the packed dirt road, slightly damp from the early morning dew, and looked for the barest indents of her sharp talons against the soft ground. 

Sokka was exhausted and starving, and this was a terrible idea. His feet dragged through the trail that Beaky left behind her. He regretted ever following Zuko, or caring about what that stupid jerk did, or whether or not he got himself into trouble.

Iroh would be awake by now, and probably worried, when he realized that his nephew was missing. He might not even know something was wrong at first, since Sokka was gone too. Sokka was pretty sure he wouldn’t think they’d gone off to kill each other, at least, so he’d probably think they’d gone back into town, but if Sokka didn’t turn back and Zuko didn’t return, eventually…

He’d probably think something _bad_ had happened to him, because that stupid jerk hadn’t even said goodbye. An uncharitable part of his mind—the part that was still half-focused on his empty stomach, and how that was definitely Zuko’s fault—wanted to think that Zuko didn’t even care about his uncle, but even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. 

Zuko was an idiot, for sure, if he thought that he was a burden, or that he was doing his uncle a _favor_ by ditching him.

Sokka didn’t know. Maybe Iroh _would_ have a better life without his nephew, but he barely knew the guy and he could already say with confidence that it wouldn’t be the life that Iroh wanted. 

Sokka was distracted enough with his thoughts that he nearly missed where the trail ended. If Zuko had tried to cover his tracks, he’d done a terrible job of it, but it still took Sokka a good forty feet in his tired daze to notice that the muddy footprints he’d been following had disappeared.

He backtracked to the point where the ostrich horse tracks left the road, and shifted to follow the trampled grass and broken branches instead. Sokka wasn’t trying to be particularly sneaky, but it turned out there wasn’t any reason to be. The camp was empty when Sokka finally clawed his way through the brush. 

He only had a moment to take it in, a fire, still lit, Zuko’s things spread around it, Beaky tied up nearby. He had _just_ a moment, to think that was strange, before something crashed out from the brush beside him. 

Sokka told himself that the reason he didn’t flinch was because he wasn’t afraid, and not because he was so exhausted that his reaction time would, truly, have gotten him stabbed, if Zuko hadn’t caught sight of his face, and drawn up short—

Sokka fixed Zuko with an unimpressed look, channeling Gran Gran, or Bato when he’d caught Sokka and Katara getting up to mischief. 

Zuko’s hands went slack on his swords when he realized who it was. He gaped at him.

“How did you even—” he shouted. “ _Stop following me!_ ”

Sokka snorted at the hypocrisy. 

He pushed Zuko off of him and turned toward the camp. The nice thing about waking Zuko up, and Zuko being ready to fight _anything_ at a moments notice, was that there was a conveniently vacated bedroll lying on top of _Sokka’s_ tarp, which Zuko had stolen.

“Doesn’t feel great, does it?” he asked. He collapsed onto Zuko’s unoccupied bedroll. Oh, sweet, horizontal bliss.

“What are you doing?” Zuko demanded.

“Sleeping,” Sokka said. He grabbed the corner of the tarp and rolled over, pinning the edge of it and Zuko’s bedroll underneath him. Zuko made an annoyed, flustered noise that Sokka pretended not to hear. 

“How did you even find me?” Zuko asked. Sokka felt a tug on his blankets and clutched them tighter. 

“Beaky sucks at stealth,” Sokka said, burrowing deeper into the blankets. They were still warm, and Sokka was just going to enjoy it, instead of thinking about it too hard. He yawned and felt his jaw pop. “And so do you. I don’t think you’d know subtlety if it hit you between the eyes.”

Zuko made another angry catigator noise. Sokka held fast, when he yanked indignantly on the blanket again. 

And then he stomped off to clatter around the camp, no doubt packing to leave while Sokka slept. 

_Whatever_ , Sokka thought, as he settled in to sleep. He didn’t even care. It wasn’t like he couldn’t catch up to him again, later.

Zuko... was still there, when Sokka woke up. He was staring at Sokka, his impassive face betraying absolutely nothing, even as his foot tapped impatiently against the ground where it was pinned under his crossed knee. 

Sokka blinked at him, and then slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows. It looked like Zuko had already broken camp. The firepit had been covered over with fresh earth, and most of Zuko’s bags were packed and loaded onto Beaky’s saddle already. 

The ostrich horse was glaring at both of them—at least, Sokka thought it looked like a glare, like she was annoyed that Zuko had loaded her up if they weren’t going to get moving. Sokka had been planning on having to try to find Zuko’s trail again, probably this time with Zuko making it difficult for him, trying to cover his tracks. 

He had _not_ expected Zuko to wait for him... even if he was probably just waiting for Sokka to vacate his bedroll. Sokka pushed himself to sitting, so that he could at least look Zuko in the eye.

“You should go back,” Zuko said, after a beat of awkward silence. He seemed a little uncertain as he said it, like he couldn’t understand why Sokka was here now, let alone how to make him leave again. Sokka couldn’t tell if he was stubborn or stupid, thinking that Iroh would just be _okay_ with that, if Sokka came back and Zuko didn’t. 

“Will _you_ go back?” Sokka asked. 

Zuko frowned at him, not quite meeting his eye. 

“Then no. I’m staying,” Sokka said, and Zuko was back to bristling.

“I’m not going to—you don’t have to babysit me,” Zuko said. “Whatever you want, you’ll be better off with Uncle. You two can—”

“Zuko, the only thing your uncle is going to do is look for you. _That_ won’t help me,” Sokka said.

Zuko only stared at him. He could practically see the little gears turning, mouth turned down in a slight frown, like he wanted to argue. He _honestly_ thought that Sokka and his uncle would be better off without him, and he was _still_ trying to convince Sokka to leave him.

Fat chance of that, now that Sokka had caught up to him. 

“So what’s the plan?” Sokka asked. “Are you still looking for Aang?”

“If I say no, will you stop following me?” Zuko asked.

“No,” Sokka said. 

“And if I say yes—”

“Definitely not,” Sokka said.

“I—what do you _want_?” Zuko shouted, exasperated. Beaky startled at the noise, and Sokka quickly shushed her.

“Do I have to want something?” Sokka asked. 

“You’re still here, aren’t you?” he asked. “You must want something.”

It struck Sokka that this was the first time they had really talked, just the two of them, no risk of anyone else overhearing, no threat of being caught, no weird… whatever it was between them on the raft and in the resort, hatred or baggage or whatever. None of it.

“I don’t know,” Sokka admitted. “Your help, I guess.”

Zuko was clearly baffled by his answer, but… it was all Sokka could give. Zuko was his best chance, if he wanted to find Aang and Katara. Even if Zuko really wasn’t still looking for Aang, at least he was going somewhere. That was all Sokka really needed—to keep moving. 

Zuko huffed. 

He stood. He said nothing as he nudged Sokka aside with his boot, enough to move him off the bedroll so he could fold it and the tarp and pack it into Beaky’s saddle bag.

Then Zuko stepped into the stirrup, and snapped Beaky’s reins.

It was Sokka’s turn to gape, first in disbelief, then in outrage. 

“Hey, wait!” Sokka said.

He caught Zuko at the edge of the trees, as Beaky tramped through the already crushed grass back toward the road. The road followed the river, so they were still going inland so long as they kept along this route. Sokka wasn’t sure if Zuko had a destination in mind, or if he’d just picked a direction without thinking things through. 

Zuko glared down at him, and then glanced away in a flash. When Sokka settled in to walk beside him, the frown only deepened, as the silence stretched. He could have laughed at how stubborn Zuko was, if it wasn’t so infuriating.

“Any chance I can get a ride?” Sokka asked.

“No,” Zuko said. He snapped the reins again, and sped up a little out of spite. 

Sokka groaned and jogged after him. “You’re such a jerk!” he said. 

“Get your own,” Zuko said plainly. 

“It’s not even _your_ ostrich-horse!” Sokka said.

“It is now,” he said.

Sokka huffed and stopped walking. Zuko didn’t even slow down, so Sokka only lasted a few moments before he was forced to follow them again, if he didn’t want to get left behind. He jogged to catch up, hiking his bag further up his shoulder. Zuko cut him a suspicious glance. 

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Sokka asked. 

Zuko scoffed and rolled his eyes. He leaned over to dig into the pocket of his bag. He pulled out one of the maps from the shop, high quality paper with a fine leather tie. Zuko waved his stolen map jauntily in the air, eyebrow raised, daring Sokka to complain.

“Where _are_ you going?” Sokka asked. 

Zuko stared down at him, but didn’t answer. 

“You haven’t decided, or you’re not telling?” Sokka prompted. 

Zuko snorted. So. Probably the latter. 

Sokka shifted his bag on his shoulder again. He could ask Zuko to let Beaky carry it, but he didn’t trust Zuko not to leave him behind, and then he wouldn’t have _anything_. He glanced up at Zuko again—not very subtly, but it was fine, because Zuko was glaring resolutely at the road, even though there was nothing but flat, open field all around them, and it really didn’t require _that_ much attention.

An ostrich horse could easily outpace a person. Zuko had made Beaky ride all through the night, so maybe she was just tired. Maybe she’d been tired while Sokka was sleeping, too, and that was why Zuko hadn’t been gone, when he woke up. Or maybe he’d just wanted his bedroll back.

Either way, an ostrich horse _could_ outpace a person… if their rider wanted them to. Sokka snuck another glance at Zuko. 

“Are you sure I can’t get a—” Sokka started to say. Zuko snorted.

“No,” he said, and urged Beaky a few steps ahead. 

Sokka sighed, but… it wasn’t that hard to catch up. 

It was a nice morning, and the pace wasn’t _too_ bad, certainly no worse than when they’d been travelling with Iroh. The _quiet_ , though. Yeesh. Sokka was going to collapse from boredom long before he collapsed from exhaustion. 

He cast around for something to talk about—road, trees, sky... 

“Nice… clouds,” Sokka said. Zuko didn’t even glance at him, but Sokka could see the little crease that was forming between his eyes. Confused-frown, he thought. Not annoyed. Encouraged by the lack of shouting, Sokka forged ahead.

“Did I ever tell you about the fortune teller that was conning a whole village?”

“I’m sure you’re going to,” Zuko said flatly. Sokka rolled his eyes at him. 

“Yeah, she had everyone convinced that she could read tea leaves, or tell a person’s future by the day they were born. It was so dumb, like, that’s not even _real_ —”

“It is real,” Zuko said.

“Wha—no it’s _not_ ,” Sokka said. He stared at him, half-expecting him to be joking, even though Zuko never joked about anything. But, no, he was dead serious, staring back at Sokka like he was expecting a challenge. Sokka laughed. “You _can’t_ believe in that superstitious nonsense.”

“It’s not…” Zuko mouthed the word, nonsense, with a grimace like it was leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “A… person can be born unlucky. Or lucky. That’s real.”

“It’s self fulfilling. If you believe it, then of course it’ll happen,” Sokka said, pointedly not thinking about his own fortune, 'Your future is full of struggle and anguish. Most of it self-inflicted,' and how apt that felt right about now, trailing along after Zuko. Sokka tucked his hands under his arms. “I can’t believe you actually buy into that stuff. You’re supposed to be cool and mysterious.”

Zuko raised an eyebrow at him. “You think I’m cool and mysterious?”

“I—no,” Sokka said, heat creeping up his neck. That was _obviously_ not what he’d meant! “I _don’t_ , and I never _will_ , because you believe the clouds will tell you what kind of tea to drink—”

“That’s not what I said,” Zuko grumbled. “I said…”

Sokka grinned a little, feeling oddly accomplished at getting Zuko to talk about anything, even if it was something as stupid as _fortune telling_ and _destiny_. Then Zuko caught the look on Sokka’s face. He cut himself off mid-sentence, and his expression dropped into his usual frown as he went back to glaring resolutely at the road.

Damn. 

Sokka trailed along beside Zuko for the rest of the day, but the most he could get out of him was a few hums of acknowledgement. It had already been past midday when they started walking. With the late start and the nice, flat roads, Zuko and Beaky _definitely_ could have kept going into the night. 

Instead, almost an hour before sundown, Zuko veered off the side of the road without a word of warning, so abruptly that Sokka nearly stumbled over himself to follow. The road had clearly been built to follow the river, weaving back and forth over the fields to occasionally kiss the banks before winding away again. Zuko picked a spot of sandy ground—a terrible spot, really, that was going to be wet and gross if there was even a little rain—and slipped off Beaky’s back to start unloading without a word. 

He had, apparently, decided that the best thing to do about Sokka following him was to pretend that he wasn’t there at all. Sokka sighed and kicked his shoes off next to Zuko’s growing pile of bags, ignoring the glare that Zuko sent his direction when they scattered sand at his feet.

A couple glass salamanders darted across the shore as Sokka approached the river, their translucent bodies disappearing as they slipped into the shallows. He watched their shadows blend into the reeds and then followed them in.

The river was growing thinner by the mile as they moved further and further from the coast. The water had been up his knees when he was spearfishing. Now it was only a few feet across, reaching no more than midway up his calf at its deepest point. Sokka rolled his pant legs up higher. The burn on his side still stung faintly when he leaned down, but it was manageable enough that he could ignore it. Sokka bent and cupped water to his mouth, then rubbed it over his head and the back of his neck, washing away the day’s grime. 

Sokka paused with the cool skin of his palms pressed against his flushed cheeks. His feet ached from walking all night, and for most of the day, and the cold water was nice. He flicked the excess water from his fingers and wiped his hands on his thighs, then picked his way back toward the bank. 

“I’m starving,” Sokka said, sitting down in the dry sand beside his discarded pack. Zuko just huffed, a quiet acknowledgement.

… seriously? He wasn’t even going to offer to share, when Sokka had been following him on foot, and they hadn’t stopped to eat _all day_?

“The river’s thinning out,” Sokka said pointedly. “There won’t be many fish left, soon.”

Zuko hesitated.

“We’ll find something,” he said. Sokka stared at him.

“Find something?” Sokka repeated. “Wait. You packed up all your stuff, stole a map, snuck off with Beaky, but you didn’t _bring any food?_ ”

“It’s—I left it in the cave,” Zuko said defensively. Sokka couldn’t tell if he was a reckless idiot, or just that much of a self-sacrificing jerk, that he’d left all those supplies for his uncle. Well… and for Sokka, if he hadn’t come after Zuko instead. “Anyway, you didn’t bring _anything_.”

“You didn’t exactly give me a chance to pack,” Sokka said. He sighed and pulled his bag into his lap. “I think I might have a few of those apricherries, still.”

“I don’t want your disgusting, squashed fruit,” Zuko said.

“Suit yourself,” Sokka said, but he still peeled the stuck together pieces apart and set half aside.

Zuko frowned at him, half way through tying Beaky to the sturdiest-looking tree nearby. “Are you just going to sit there?”

“Uh, yes?” Sokka said. “What else would I do?”

“How about you _help_?” Zuko asked. “Here, feed the ostrich horse.” 

Zuko yanked the tie on Beaky’s reins tight, and then stomped over to drop the sack of sun oats unceremoniously at Sokka’s feet. Sokka gave the bag, and then Zuko, an unimpressed look. 

“She has a name,” Sokka said. 

“I will never call her that stupid—just, make yourself useful!” Zuko shouted. 

“Can’t,” Sokka said. He leaned back, pillowing his head on his arms. Beaky had wandered over as far as her rope would allow, to try and peck at the outside of the sun oats bag with interest. “I’m too tired.” 

“You are _not_ too tired!” Zuko said. 

“I walked all day,” Sokka said. He peeled off a piece of dried apricherry and stuck it into his cheek. They were surprisingly tart, and it made his mouth water. It also made him hungrier, reminding his stomach that he hadn’t eaten since last night. “And I walked half the night. I’m too tired, _and_ I’m too hungry. Why don’t _you_ catch us some fish?”

Zuko glared at him. 

“Just—feed the stupid ostrich horse,” he snapped, but he did bend down to roll his pant legs up to his knees. Sokka watched Zuko stomp over to the side of the river to pick up and discard sticks like they’d personally insulted him.

Beaky was still pecking at the outside of the sun oats bag, obviously getting annoyed. She turned a beady, frustrated eye on Sokka, like she was thinking about pecking _him_ for once, and—Sokka didn’t have anything against Beaky. It wasn’t _her_ fault Zuko was a jerk who hadn’t let Sokka ride with him. 

He opened the bag to peek inside. 

“Three scoops,” Zuko said. He was doing a truly terrible job of sharpening a very awkwardly shaped stick. Sokka stifled a laugh, and did what he was told, tying up the bag again.

“There’s a brush in her saddlebag,” Zuko said. He turned to watch Sokka, like he didn’t trust him to find the right bag on his own. “The _small_ bag. Not my bag.” 

Sokka scoffed, but whatever. He’d brushed Appa before, so he guessed he could do that, too, even if Beaky was… sharper than Appa, with her pointy beak and claws, and she kept staring at him with her beady little eye like she didn’t trust him any more than Zuko did. 

Zuko kept staring, too, although Sokka was pretty sure that was only half to make sure that Sokka was doing it right, and half him eyeing the fruit that Sokka had set aside for him, like he was regretting not taking them when Sokka offered.

Zuko stabbed his spear into the river bottom, and Sokka stifled another laugh. By the frustrated noise, Sokka was going to guess he’d missed.

“You’re doing great,” Sokka called. Zuko glared at him.

The camp was shaping up nicely, actually, even if it was a little too close to the river for the weather. Zuko had tied Beaky up far enough away that she couldn’t stomp all over their things, but next to a nice patch of grass that she had happily curled up in once she’d pecked up every last sun oat. She’d folded her head under one wing as soon as he’d finished brushing her, so Sokka was going to assume he was dismissed.

Sokka kicked a little divot in the sand to mark where the fire would go, and then turned to eye the rest of Zuko’s things, and his own small bag. They didn’t have all that much more to unpack, and _that_ was making one problem very obviously apparent.

“I don’t have a bed roll,” Sokka said. 

“I noticed,” Zuko said, without looking up. He was focused _very_ intently on the water, but Sokka could tell just by the way that he was holding the spear that he wasn’t going to catch anything, so he didn’t particularly care about distracting him. 

“So let me sleep on yours,” he said. 

“Let—” Zuko stumbled, nearly slipped on the river bottom. He shot Sokka a flat look. “Then where am I supposed to sleep?”

“Just unfold it! It’s big enough for two,” Sokka said. 

Zuko flushed angrily. 

“I’m not sharing!” he snapped. “It’s mine!”

“Well, the tarp is _mine_ ,” Sokka said, “but you were happy to steal that.”

“It’s not—” Zuko tried to argue.

“It’s mine,” Sokka insisted. “So either you can share, and we can both be warm and dry, or you can be a stubborn jerk and enjoy sleeping on the wet ground while I freeze my—”

“Fine!” Zuko shouted, so loud that Beaky shuffled nervously around to stare at him. “Whatever, fine!”

“You’ll scare the fish,” Sokka said mildly. 

Zuko gave him such a withering glare that it could have turned the grass brown, if the effect hadn’t been ruined by how red he’d turned while he was shouting. Sokka just rolled his eyes. The folded up end of the tarp was poking out of the top of Zuko’s bag, but when Sokka tried to grab it Zuko stomped out of the water and up the bank so quickly that he kicked water and little wet blobs of sand all over Sokka’s boots and calves. 

Zuko snatched it before he could reach, and Sokka scoffed. 

“Don’t touch my bag,” Zuko said. “I’ll do it.”

“Don’t you think you should start a fire?” Sokka asked, knocking his toe against the ground to shake the sand loose. 

“I’ll do that too,” Zuko said. “And I’ll catch dinner. I’ll just do everything.”

Sokka laughed. “Give me the spear,” he said. 

Zuko narrowed his eyes.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why—because you _suck_ at this, and I want to eat more than a few dried apricherries today,” Sokka said. “So give me the spear. Eat your stupid squashed fruit. And start us a fire.”

Zuko glared at him. For a second, he looked like he was going to argue, but he just shoved the stick into Sokka’s hands with an annoyed huff. Then he snatched the fruit off the stone Sokka had set it aside on, and stomped off to gather kindling. Sokka watched him go, and then pulled out his knife to knock the spear into the sharper point.

Watching Zuko struggle to catch anything in the river was pretty hilarious, but the look on Zuko’s face he came back to see a fish already wriggling on the end of Sokka’s spear? 

_That_ was going to keep Sokka in a good mood for a long, long time. 

Assembling the firepit involved a bit more _punching fire_ than was probably, strictly necessary, but so long as Zuko kept it on the sand and away from Sokka, he didn’t really care. Zuko was sitting on top of Sokka’s tarp, sulkily poking the branches toward the center of the firepit when he finally waded out of the water. 

Sokka stretched out next to him to soak up some of the heat while he cleaned his catch. He stuck them into the coals when he was done. He stretched, as gently as he could with his bandaged side, and leaned back on his elbows to watch their catch cook. The quiet… wasn’t as hostile as it could have been. As Sokka _expected_ it to be. 

It was almost… peaceful, which wasn’t a word he’d have ever thought to ascribe to spending time with Zuko.

When the skin started to curl around the edges, Sokka picked one of the fish out of the fire to check on it. He handed Zuko the bigger one, and then pulled his own fish out to blow on it. He honestly never thought he’d see the day where he got sick of eating fish, but Sokka would kill for even a single piece of seal jerky right now.

“Thanks,” Zuko said, in such a grudging, awkward tone that Sokka nearly laughed in his face. He managed not to, and so probably managed to keep his eyebrows, but Zuko narrowed his eyes at him anyway, as he started picking at his fish. 

Meals at home were always loud and chaotic, especially before the men left, with large shared plates that felt like a challenge. More than once Sokka had come home late from playing hunter to find some cousin or another had stolen his place around the fire. Even after the men left, meals were wilder than this, storytelling, gossiping, bickering with Katara...

Now it was just quiet. And quiet wasn’t necessarily _bad_ , or uncomfortable, but it was different. Sokka picked his fish clean, and then threw the bones into the fire, wiping his fingers on his pant leg.

“Well, I’m beat,” Sokka said. “Got a big day of _walking_ ahead of me.”

The bedroll was… not as large as Sokka was imagining it would be, when he unfolded it, but he was _not_ going to be deterred, especially with Zuko watching him with a sour look like he was regretting ever agreeing to share. 

Sokka laid it out over the tarp, so they could at least stay warm and dry, and then shook the spare blanket out over it. He took the good side, the side closer to the fire, because if Zuko didn’t like it he could just light a second one. 

Sokka settled under the covers with a sigh, and closed his eyes. 

“... Stop staring at me,” Sokka said. 

“I’m not staring at you,” Zuko snapped. And then the fire snapped, too, spitting around the scraps that Zuko had tossed into it. Sokka cracked an eye open to watch him come around the fire, angrily… no, reluctantly. Awkwardly. 

Sokka stifled a laugh at the look on his face, like he was approaching an angry rat-viper, and not a bedroll.

Zuko laid down like he was climbing on top of a funeral pyre, stiff-limbed, hands flat at his sides with his palms pressed down against the fabric. Sokka rolled his eyes as Zuko grudgingly shuffled under the blanket with him.

He couldn’t help the surprised little sound that escaped him. It was _much_ warmer under the blanket with Zuko. Sokka sagged back against the tarp, as much as someone could sag, against the hard, lumpy ground, and ignored how supremely awkward Zuko was being as he settled.

Sokka could either lie on his side, facing Zuko with his back to the fire, or he could lie on his back. The burn on his side meant putting his back to Zuko wasn’t really an option. 

The burn was… really the only reason he _wasn’t_ sleeping with his back facing Zuko. The thought fit strangely when it slid into his mind. 

He wouldn’t have risked turning his back on him, weeks ago. 

It didn’t even feel like a risk, now. 

Still, sleeping on his side facing Zuko was _awkward_ , especially with him lying there stiff as a board. Sokka rolled onto his back instead, mimicking Zuko’s corpse-stiff pose. They lay there in silence for a moment, staring at the dark branches crisscrossing the canopy under the muted moonlight. This was fine. Normal, and not weird at all. He shifted a little. He laced his fingers together over his stomach. He unlaced them, shifted again until his palms were stretched flat against his sides.

“Cozy,” he said lightly, and Zuko actually snorted a laugh. 

The sun was in his eyes. 

Sokka squeezed them shut, and buried his face further into his pillow, drawing the blankets higher. He was way too warm, his bed way too comfortable to abandon it for stupid chores. In the back of his mind, he was dreading the sound of the camp coming awake, of Katara prodding him until he eased, grumbling, out from Appa’s side, or just yanked his sleep-warm pillow out from under his cheek.

Someone shifted, a light touch ghosting almost tentatively over his arm. Then, his pillow sighed, and Sokka’s bed dipped. Sokka yelped as he was dumped onto the cold ground, and then blinked dazed, at—

Oh, right. 

“Get up,” Zuko grumbled, looking just as rumpled and sleep-warm as Sokka felt. Sokka scrubbed a hand over his cheek, as he tried to get his brain to wake up with the rest of him. “I’m not wasting the whole morning waiting for you.”

Sokka groaned and grabbed the edge of the bedding. He rolled with it until he was wrapped up in the nice, firebender warm cocoon of fabric, effectively blocking out the morning light. Zuko huffed and nudged him with his foot, trying to unspool the tangle of blankets. Sokka refused to budge. He nudged again, harder. 

“ _Get up_ , or I’m leaving without you,” Zuko said. 

Sokka squinted at him through the very top of the blankets. Zuko looked deeply unimpressed. 

“It’s early,” Sokka said. 

“It’s way past dawn,” Zuko said. “I should have left hours ago.”

“And yet you’re waiting for me,” Sokka said. 

“I’m waiting for my bedroll,” he said stubbornly. He nudged Sokka again, right in the side, and Sokka didn’t quite manage to hold back the little wince as it came a bit too close to tender skin. Zuko jerked back, looking guilty, and Sokka seized on it immediately. 

“Five—fifteen more minutes,” he said. 

Zuko frowned, and huffed, “ _Fine_.”

Sokka dozed to the sound of Zuko packing up camp, being as obnoxiously loud as he could. He only poked his head back out from under the blankets when the noises stopped. Zuko was sitting a few feet away from him, just out of arm’s reach, _watching him_.

“Did you bring the medicine Song gave you?” Zuko asked. 

Sokka sighed, and kicked the blankets back far enough to sit up. 

“Yeah, I have it,” Sokka said. “It’s in my bag.”

“Well, have you been using it?” Zuko asked. Sokka scoffed. 

“I was a little busy chasing after you,” he said. “It’s fine. It’s already healing, anyway.”

Zuko frowned and stood to grab Sokka’s bag, immediately yanking the drawstring back to start snooping around, because apparently Zuko threw a fit if Sokka so much as looked at _his_ bag, but he didn’t have any problems touching _Sokka’s_ stuff.

“We have time now,” he said, tossing the entire kit over, so that Sokka had to fumble to catch it. “Do it before we leave.”

Zuko settled down next to him, arms crossed, and just stared. Sokka rolled his eyes. 

“Fine,” he said, popping the lid on the box. He’d… definitely been paying attention, when Song showed him what to do. It wouldn’t be _that_ hard.

Zuko glanced away briefly while Sokka undid the ties on his robe, giving him some semblance of privacy, at least. The bandage on his side was rumpled, but still looked fairly clean. Well, Sokka didn’t really know how it was supposed to look, actually, but it _seemed_ fine.

And he felt fine! He could probably just leave it as it was, and then he wouldn’t have to touch it…

He glanced at Zuko again, who was still stubbornly not-watching, and waiting. He huffed.

Sokka winced as he peeled the old bandage back, teeth clenched, eyes rolled toward the sky. This was definitely the worst part, and, yeah… maybe he’d been putting this off, because it was awful and it _hurt_ to touch. His fingers felt clumsy taking the old bandage off, and he tried not to shake too badly and jostle the wound any more than he had to. 

It did look better, at least. Or, Sokka thought it looked better. He didn’t really know what a healing burn was supposed to look like either, but the blistering and the redness had lessened, at least. That was probably the best he could ask for, given the circumstances.

The lid on the salve jar stuck, which was annoying, because Zuko just frowned at him the whole time while he struggled with it. Sokka huffed and dabbed a little on his fingers. He hated this stuff. What he wouldn’t give to be a water bender right now, or have Katara—

The burn was in an awkward spot, too. It was hard to reach, and he couldn’t really see what he was doing without twisting too much, which just tugged on the raw skin and made the whole thing harder.

Zuko was still sitting there, still watching him. Sokka glanced up when he cleared his throat.

“Stop staring at me,” Sokka said. If Zuko was bothered by Sokka snapping at him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t look away, either.

“You’re terrible at that,” Zuko decided. 

“I’m—” Sokka clenched his teeth and forced himself to take a breath, because it wasn’t irritation that he was feeling. It was pain, and it was homesickness, and neither of those things were Zuko’s fault, even if he was being a big, blunt jerk about it. “I’m out of practice,” he said. “Usually Katara helps, and she’s got her whole… magic water thing going for her. So.”

“Let me do it for you,” Zuko said.

Sokka stalled, surprised. He’d thought Zuko was annoyed with him for holding them up. He definitely hadn’t expected him to offer to _help_ , and it made something strangely close to self-consciousness stab at him. “You don’t have to.”

Zuko turned a little red. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. 

“Do _you_ know what you’re...” Sokka said, but he cut himself off when Zuko gave him an unimpressed look. “Right. Uh, okay.” 

Sokka handed the burn kit to him, and let Zuko shift over until he was right beside him. Sokka was—oddly nervous, in anticipation of the pain but also… just because. Whatever, he didn’t know why. The only thing that made it bearable was that Zuko seemed hesitant, too, as he fidgeted with the contents of the box.

Then, he took a bracing breath, and set the box down at his knee, salve and clean bandages at the ready. His fingers were warm against Sokka’s skin. His touch feathered incredibly gently around the edge of the burn for a moment, just looking. 

“Tell me if it hurts,” Zuko said. 

“It always hurts,” Sokka said grumpily.

“Then… tell me if I hurt you,” he said quietly. Sokka just nodded, feeling like his breath was caught in his throat, tense with anticipation.

Sokka braced himself, but—it didn’t really hurt, nothing worse than the prickling stinging he felt when it was exposed to the open air. Zuko was shockingly gentle, and the salve was cool against his skin, chasing away the pain and leaving a tingling numbness behind it.

He exhaled shakily when Zuko was finished with the salve. He moved on to carefully laying the bandage down. 

“Did your uncle do this for you?” Sokka asked.

“No. I’m not helpless, so I did it myself,” Zuko said. 

Sokka snorted, and Zuko’s shoulders came up, defensive, like Sokka was making fun of him. He wasn’t, really, it was just… once he’d realized that Zuko was literally _always_ prickly, the stuff he said was a lot less likely to make him mad. Also…

Sokka tried to catch Zuko’s eye. He’d tilted his chin down a little more, to really focus on what he was doing. He might have been glaring stubbornly at the burn, but the back of his neck was a little red, and growing redder the longer Sokka stared at him. 

Zuko may say some stupid, jerk things, but he usually seemed embarrassed about it afterwards. It was almost like he didn’t know how to talk to people without being a royal pain in the ass, and that was kind of funny in itself. 

“I kinda figured it was an old scar,” Sokka said, graciously letting Zuko’s rudeness slide. Zuko frowned. A thoughtful one, this time, because Zuko was _always_ frowning but they weren’t all the same, and Sokka was actually starting to get the hang of them.

“It is old,” Zuko said.

“Oh,” Sokka said. “How old?”

Zuko leaned back, putting a little more space between them, and hesitated. 

“Three years,” Zuko said. 

Sokka stared at him for a long moment. _Three?_

Was that a coincidence? It _had_ to be, because Zuko’s sister had said he’d been hunting Aang for three years, and the alternative would be… 

He still had a little bit of a challenge in his eyes, as Sokka’s gaze slid over to the raised skin of the scar on his cheek. He’d never looked at it before, or at least, never _really looked_ , because it never mattered, and it felt rude to stare. But he was looking now, and Zuko didn’t seem to mind, and that was…

It didn’t look so different, really, from Sokka’s. Same redness, same shape, long healed, same… huh, same shape, he thought, it looked…

Well, it looked like a hand. Sokka saw it, he’d seen it before, but it hadn’t really clicked, and he could see his own realization reflected on Zuko’s face. Zuko looked tense, like he expected the question to follow. Sokka opened his mouth to ask, and Zuko seemed to shrink, a little, and that just—snapped him out of it.

“I hope mine heals that well,” he said, instead. 

Zuko looked startled, and… relieved. Sokka smiled, and after a long stunned moment, Zuko did too, the barest turn of his lips. 

“It—will. Yours will heal fine,” he said. “It might… not scar. You know, if you take care of it.”

That last bit he added very pointedly, and Sokka laughed again. He tilted his head down to redo the ties on his robe.

“You can do it for me,” Sokka decided, as he slowly eased himself to standing. He took a deep breath, carefully twisting from side to side. He hadn’t even noticed how distracting the discomfort from the burn had been, until it was gone. “Since it’s kind of your fault in the first place.”

Zuko snorted, and turned away to start fussing with Beaky’s saddle. There really wasn’t much left to pack, so Sokka set to rolling up the bedroll and tarp as tightly as he could. Too bad Zuko was too stubborn to appreciate the help—when Sokka moved to stuff it into Zuko’s pack, Zuko just snatched it out of his hands, grumpily, and stuffed it in himself. 

Sokka rolled his eyes and turned to bury the remains of their campfire from the night before in the sand. It had burned down to ashes and coals by now, and Zuko had already made sure it was out, but it didn’t hurt to be extra careful not to leave remnants of peculiar firepits, just in case anyone got nosy. Zuko untied Beaky, stroking her nose and murmuring to her, uncharacteristically soft. Sokka watched until Zuko noticed him looking, and then Sokka grinned, which immediately earned him a scowl.

His feet were still sore from walking yesterday. He was absolutely not looking forward to walking today, but at least he was well rested, and had eaten, and was feeling all around better. Even his side hurt less, a little numb now from the salve. Zuko watched him impatiently as he tugged on his boots, and then hefted his own bag up onto his shoulders.

“Here,” Zuko said, thrusting the reins into Sokka’s hands. 

Sokka took the reins, a bit clumsily, and Beaky followed her lead. She nudged Sokka on the shoulder, then the hand, looking for a treat. Sokka stared a bit dumbly, first at Beaky, and then at Zuko, who was looking increasingly impatient and scowly, arms crossed tightly in front of him. 

Was he… being nice? 

Zuko huffed. 

“I’m tired of sitting,” he snapped, before Sokka could say anything. Sokka couldn’t help but snort as Zuko started to stomp away. 

There was just one tiny problem.

Sokka turned toward Beaky. She was considering him patiently, with her beady little eye. He glanced at the reins. 

“I actually don’t know how to ride this thing,” Sokka admitted, and that made Zuko stop. He turned back to look at him, torn between looking incredulous and irritated. Sokka felt the need to defend himself. “I mean—we don’t have ostrich horses in the South Pole! Where was I supposed to learn?”

Sokka reached out to… pet her nose? He’d seen Zuko do that earlier, a bit absently, so maybe she found that soothing. How hard could this be, right? He’d flown Appa before, after all. Well, Appa had mostly flown himself, but Sokka had sat and held the reins and they hadn’t even crashed or gotten lost, so this would probably be fine. 

“Good bird… horse… thing,” Sokka crooned. “Please don’t break my neck—”

Zuko snatched the reins out of his hands. He grumbled under his breath as he hooked his foot in the stirrup and slung his leg over the ostrich horse’s back.

“Hey!” Sokka said. “We were bonding!”

“Shut up,” Zuko said, and then he held out his hand. 

Sokka stared at it. 

“...What?”

“You don’t… know how to ride an ostrich horse,” Zuko said. For a moment he looked—almost uncertain, his unburned ear tinged faintly pink, which… Sokka definitely must have been mistaken. He blinked, and Zuko was scowling again. Yep, that was more like it. Sokka stared for a bit too long, and the silence stretched thin. 

Zuko made a frustrated sound and withdrew his hand. He lasted about two seconds before he thrust it out again, more forcefully. “Would you hurry up and just—”

“Are you offering to give me a ride?” Sokka asked.

Zuko scoffed.

“Nevermind,” Zuko said. He moved to flick the reins, and Sokka reached out hastily to stop him. 

“Wait, wait, okay,” Sokka said quickly. “I really don’t want to walk.”

Zuko huffed and turned his head away, but he did offer his hand again. 

Sokka took it, and let Zuko pull him up into the saddle behind him. There wasn’t a lot of room, and Sokka didn’t have any choice but to press flush against Zuko’s back. Immediately Beaky turned to glare at them. Zuko didn’t seem nervous, even though she _clearly_ wasn’t happy with the added weight from this arrangement. Zuko turned to look at him, too, and Sokka nearly laughed when for a second he and the ostrich horse were both giving him matching, annoyed looks.

“You need to hold on,” Zuko said. 

“I am holding on,” Sokka said. He hesitated for a second, trying to decide where to put his hands. Zuko huffed, and grabbed his wrists from where they were hovering by his sides, and then yanked him forward until they were wrapped around his waist.

“Hold on tighter,” Zuko said. “If you fall off, I’m not stopping for you.”

Sokka grumbled, “I’m not going to fall—” 

Zuko flicked Beaky’s reigns, and Sokka suppressed a very manly squeak when she jolted forward, nearly dumping Sokka off in the process. 

Riding an ostrich horse, he decided, was _nothing_ like riding a sky bison, with a lot more swaying and jolting around. Also, Appa was much friendlier, and didn’t turn to glare at him every time he tried to shift his weight.

Sokka was probably holding on a bit too tightly. He was surprised that Zuko hadn’t said anything, even just to make fun of him. There was no _way_ he couldn’t feel the way Sokka’s heart was pounding, which was... weird, actually, now that he noticed it. Sokka wasn’t afraid of heights, he wasn’t sure why riding an ostrich horse suddenly had his stomach in knots in a way riding Appa never did, but he was _not_ going to admit it to Zuko of all people.

Sokka forced himself to relax his fingers, where they were clutching the front of Zuko’s shirt. To hold on like… like a normal person. It wasn’t so bad. It was just… just like a really long hug, if that hug was with a _jerk_ and riding on the back of a very sharp and very testy animal who very much looked like she wanted to peck him to death.

It should have been awkward, but Sokka wasn’t feeling anything other than vaguely nervous. That was okay, because Zuko was awkward enough for the both of them. 

Sokka shifted a little, trying to lean around Zuko, but Beaky glared at him.

“Will you hold still?” Zuko grumbled. He was slouching a little, so Sokka propped his chin on Zuko’s shoulder, so he could watch where they were going. Zuko went rigid, just for a second, and Sokka couldn’t really see his face but he could picture the outrage, the mental image enough to make him stifle a smile.

Then… Zuko relaxed, first his shoulder and then the rest of him, enough that Sokka could at least stop worrying that Zuko was going to change his mind and throw him off. Sokka settled his arms a little lower, hands a little looser. He let himself relax, too, against the warm weight at his front, and together the two of them turned their attention to the road ahead.

**Author's Note:**

> Amazing Fanart!
> 
> [From Chapter 7](https://i.imgur.com/YO6kdxZ.jpg) by [sinuous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous/pseuds/sinuous)!
> 
> Thank you for the comments/kudos!


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